101 OneShots
by Elle Aitch
Summary: My response to MiniHayden's Challenge. Currently playing: Imaginary. AU. After getting into an accident with his parent's ghost portal, Danny starts to see ghosts. Too bad most of his family's just convinced that it's all in his head.
1. Everyone Knows

**Everybody Knows**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom. **

Danny had anticipated many, many situations about the day he told his parents the truth about what he was. He had imagined his mother crying, his father's stunned disbelief, or the understanding looks when they realized that this was why he seemed to be such a "failure" now. He'd imagined they might feel guilty about hunting him, even as they accepted him and applauded him for his heroism. He had even prepared himself for that other possibility, the chance that his parents would not accept what he was and that they would either try to kill or dissect him once the truth was out.

He hadn't, however, ever expected to hear those four words when he came in nursing a broken arm while his mother was cooking dinner. She had made him to go down to the lab with her so she could set his arm while he was forced to explain himself, and after a handful of lies that she hadn't bought, he finally forced out the truth, as quickly and simply as he could. She had sat there silently the entire time, simply listening to him, and the moment he was done he waited for her to give him one of the dozen reactions he'd already anticipated—stupefied silence, horror, guilt, anger, fear, disbelief, distrust, tears—yet it hadn't happened. Instead, she had looked at him, smiling, and simply said those four words:

"We've known all along."

"What?" he whispered, staring at her in shock. "But you can't—there's no way—I mean, you guys _hunted _me—or—but—" He couldn't form the words. His brain was running in circles, his heart was racing, and he just couldn't understand it. How the hell could they have known?

"Oh, sweetie, we were never really hunting you," his mother explained gently as she urged him to sit down. "We knew it was you, so we always tried our best not to hurt you. We'd set our weapons to the lowest settings and we'd miss as much as possible—well, I would miss. You _know _what your father's aim is like even when the targets aren't moving. But we had to at least pretend. You were so insistent on keeping your secret, after all, and if we hadn't been hunting you, you would've realized that we'd caught on ages ago, and all the other ghost hunters would've questioned why we were leaving you alone. Nothing we said to them would've made them actually believe that you were a good ghost."

"But how could you know?" he choked out at last.

"Really, sweetie, how could we not?" she chuckled. "You were coming home injured all the time after that lab accident, your grades were slipping and you were barely sleeping, and there were all those strange incidents—like you waking up in the kitchen, or that time I opened your door and saw you floating over your bed. Your father and I thought you were possessed at first, but then we realized that it was something different, that you were something different. Once we discovered that you had somehow obtained a fully spectral form, we also understood why all of our ghost hunting equipment reacted around you. In a way, it was a good test for all of our inventions. If they reacted to you properly, then we knew they worked. And Danny, sweetie, if we hadn't known, then you would've gotten hurt. We have ghost traps set up all over the house. If we hadn't recorded your ecto-signature and set our more dangerous devices to recognize it, then they could have seriously hurt you."

"But still . . . I just can't believe it," he whispered, shaking his head.

"Well, there was also the footage of your accident," his mother explained, and for the first time her smile vanished. "We were worried about you when you told us about it, Danny, but originally we didn't want to watch it. We were scared that—I just—well, I couldn't stand to watch you getting hurt by one of our inventions and not have the power to do anything about it, but once you started acting strangely and we noticed your powers from time to time, we knew that we had to look at the footage if we wanted to understand what was happening to you. I'm so sorry, Danny. It looked—it looked painful."

"It was," he admitted. "I've never felt anything that hurt as bad as that, and I've forced myself to do it twice now."

"Twice?"

"There was an incident with a wishing ghost," explained Danny, rubbing the back of his neck uneasily. "I lost my powers, but I ended up going back in and doing it again . . . but I don't get it. If you guys knew, then why didn't you say something to me?"

"You clearly wanted to keep it a secret," his mom said quietly. "And you're as stubborn as your father is, and about as good an actor. Besides, as much as I really wanted to coddle you and keep you safe, I knew that I wouldn't be able to, sweetie. You're smart and with all of those powers, you'd find a way to do what you wanted to do no matter what we might've wanted for you. But you know, Danny, even though I know what you are and about some of the things that you've done, I would like to know more, and it wouldn't hurt if you explained why you were robbing those banks or what that whole incident with the mayor was about and—"

"—I was being framed!" he groaned, exasperated since he had said that a thousand times already, but inwardly he was smiling. "And apparently Dad's a better actor than me if he managed to keep this a secret for so long. Still . . . You really want to know everything, don't you?"

"Well, we should probably wait until your father gets home," she admitted, glancing at the wall. "He would be very disappointed if we started talking too much about ghosts without him."

"Okay," he agreed, and honestly, he was kind of glad that his parents had known all along. He'd always been worried about the guilt they would feel over hunting him and their plans to accept him the day that he told him the truth, but now he didn't need to worry about it. Well, that and it was both nice (and kind of creepy) that his parents were paying more attention to him and his life than he'd thought. Sometimes his dad and mom just seemed like they were in their own world, like he could've just disappeared for a week and they never would have noticed, but now he knew that wasn't true. His parents had been watching over him all along.

"Thanks, mom."

"For what, sweetie? You're the one who finally trusted me enough to tell me the truth," she said, smiling warmly at him. "I should be saying that to you."

"Yeah, but . . . you guys really were watching out for me and stuff, so . . . I mean . . . thanks," he mumbled, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

"Well, of course we were watching out for you, Danny," said Maddie gently. "You're our son. We'll always be there for you."

**A/N: So this one-shot is the first that I've written for MiniHayden's challenge (obviously, lol), and the first fanfic that I've ever posted on here despite my months of lurking and occasionally reviewing. It feels sort of weird. Anyway, as I was going through the list, this particular song title reminded me of an idea I had way back. I thought that it might be neat if maybe his parents knew and just played along (kind of like Jazz did until Danny realized that she knew), and this is what came out of it. To be honest, I don't think it came out as well as I'd hoped, but I'm a bit out of practice with my writing and I initially wrote this at one in the morning and did no serious editing, so . . . not too surprising, I suppose. Still, if you have time, then please leave a review.**


	2. Unsaid Things

**UNSAID THINGS**

**Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. I don't own Danny Phantom.**

Danny sat in the chair, tapping his fingers lightly against his knees as he fought the urge to just run or fly away. He knew he shouldn't be so nervous, but he couldn't help it.

Sam chuckled softly at him as she pulled the scissors out of the drawer. "Come on, Danny, it's just a haircut. You've needed one for _weeks _now."

"Yeah, but shouldn't I be going to, oh, I don't know, a professional or something?" he grumbled. "I don't want to get made fun of by the press because I ended up stuck with a stupid haircut."

"Don't you trust me?" she teased.

"I trust you to make sure I don't wind up dead when I'm fighting a ghost. I trust you to help keep the press of my back and Paulina and her little Phan-club away from me," he said, "but why the heck should I trust you with my hair, Sam?"

"You're the one who agreed to this."

"Only because I wanted Jazz to get off my back. She kept going on and on about how an untidy appearance can negatively affect self-esteem or something," said Danny, fidgeting as Sam brought the scissors closer to his head. He would not go intangible. He would _not _go intangible . . .

"Right. And this will get her to leave you alone," said Sam. "Come on, Danny, I cut my grandma's hair all the time, and besides, even if I screw up, your hair will grow back."

"Yeah, in like three years," he muttered.

"Danny, hair doesn't take that long to grow," she said, rolling her eyes since she assumed he was exaggerating, but he wasn't. "It'll be like a couple of months, max. Besides, it's either this or you'll have to use your allowance to pay for someone else to do it, and I'm not going to pay for you to eat a greasy, disgusting burger later because you couldn't trust me enough to let me cut it and went broke going to a so called professional."

"So what you're saying is that I'm either going to have to eat tofu or let you cut my hair?" he groaned, for he knew exactly how nasty tofu was after Sam had finally convinced him to "just try it" a few weeks ago. That so called burger had been one of the worst mistakes of his life. "Ugh, fine, Sam. You win. Just go ahead and cut it already."

"That's what I thought," she chuckled, and Danny closed his eyes as she began snipping away. He knew he ought to just trust her, but he couldn't bring himself to watch. Getting his haircut had made him nervous even when his hair had grown back within a couple of months, and now, knowing it would be a few years before it would . . . There was just no way he'd remain tangible if he watched her snipping it all away.

It seemed like an eternity before he finally heard her put down the scissors, the metal clinking softly on the table as she ran her free hand through his shorter locks. "There. All done. Now you can go home and cry to Jazz about the awful haircut your girlfriend gave you."

"It's really that bad?" he winced, rubbing the back of his neck nervously and noting how his hand no longer brushed the tips of his hair like it used to. How short had she cut it?

"See for yourself, oh clueless one," she commanded, putting a mirror in his hands, and taking a deep breath he opened his eyes and was surprised to see that it wasn't bad at all . . . actually, it was pretty good. There was nothing crazy about it—he'd been a little nervous that Sam would try to give him a mohawk or something crazy that was more in line with her gothic tastes—but instead it was trimmed and neat. With how long his hair had been he'd started to feel as hairy as Wulf, but now it was so short that it probably wouldn't be falling in his eyes again for ages. His new haircut would definitely make fighting ghosts easier, even if it would take a little getting used to.

"Wow, Sam . . . thanks," he said softly as he ran his fingers through it.

"Does that mean you'll let me cut it again in a few months? Or will you start crying when I bring it up?" she teased, and Danny inwardly cringed. He didn't want to tell her. He'd wanted to wait until she noticed it, until someone else finally said something about it, but the truth was, no one had. No one except him. It could be years before they finally noticed the truth and figured out that he hadn't told them such an important secret, too, and Sam . . . she deserved to know now, while she still had a chance to change her mind. Of course, Sam leaving him was the reason why he hadn't told her. He loved her too much, and it had taken so long for them to finally start dating that he just hadn't been willing to risk losing that, even if not telling her the truth meant that he would hurt her more in the end when she finally did realize that there was something wrong with him.

But, being the kind of hero he was, Danny knew he couldn't keep pretending any longer. He couldn't let this truth remain unspoken any longer, and as someone who had kept a secret for a long time, he knew that it would only get harder and harder to find the words with time.

"I won't cry," he said slowly, biting his lower lip slightly as he tried to find the way to say it, "but I'm not going to let you cut it for me in a few months, either."

Instantly her face fell, and she looked as if she were going to run away crying in a minute. It was always strange to Danny that someone as tough, as strong, and as confident as Sam could sometimes get so upset so easily. "Do you really hate it that much?"

"No! I mean, I like it, Sam, I really do," he said, the dark cloud on her face banished by a brilliant smile, "but the thing is, Sam, that—well—my hair won't need to be cut again in a few months."

Sam sat down across from him and frowned, her violet eyes now filled with worry, and Danny wished he could tell her something that would make her feel better, but he couldn't. He'd made his decision. "What's wrong, Danny?" she asked. She knew he was trying to tell her something, something important, but she couldn't understand what secret he possibly could have been keeping from her. They had told each other everything, hadn't they?

"Look at me, Sam," he said softly, his voice quavering. "I mean, _really _look at me. Haven't you noticed it yet? I'm eighteen years old . . . at least I'm supposed to be, but . . . I'm not. I don't . . . Whenever I go ghost, it's like my human side gets put on pause. My heart beat disappears. I don't need to breathe or sleep or eat. And as long as I'm a ghost, my human side doesn't change. I mean, if I get hurt, I'm still hurt when I go back to being human again, but otherwise, nothing else matters. I don't—what I'm saying is—I don't age."

Instantly Sam burst out laughing. "Danny, that's ridiculous. Of course you age. You don't look like your fourteen anymore. You're taller now, your voice has changed—"

"I'm aware that I've gone through puberty, Sam," he grumbled. "But you're not getting it. When I'm a ghost, my human half stops growing. I didn't realize it at first, either. I mean, I kind of saw myself in the mirror every day, you know, so it was hard to notice anything weird. But then one day Tucker was talking about getting a haircut . . . and I realized that I hadn't needed one in a long time. A lot longer than it should've been."

"It used to be that I'd spend just a few hours a day as a ghost," said Danny. "Some of it fighting, some of it just flying or practicing my powers, but those hours slowly added up. They started to make a difference. I'm no good at math, Sam, and you know that, but for those few hours every day, my human side stops changing. It stops growing. I—I stop aging."

"So for every week that we age, you only age about six days," said Sam slowly, working through the math on her own. Unlike Danny, she was pretty good at it. "Which means that for every year I get older, you're like fifty days behind me . . . but that's not so bad. It'll only add up to a few years that won't really matter in the end."

"You're right. It wouldn't be too bad, but the problem is it's not just a few hours anymore," Danny explained dismally. "Ever since everyone figured out that I'm Phantom, I've spent even more time as a ghost. I still have to protect the city. I still practice using my powers and go out flying. But now I have to do a ton of other stuff as Phantom, too. It's been two years since I saved the world, but I still have to do stupid interviews and parades and go and talk to important people about stuff that I don't even understand, yet they all insist that I have to be there because I saved the planet . . . There are days when I spend more time as Phantom than as Fenton. I'm not just a few dozen days or so behind anymore, Sam. I'm _weeks_. _Months_, maybe. And soon I'll probably be years behind you . . . and it scares me. I don't want to be just over twenty when you're in your thirties, or have people tell me that I look like your son when you're fifty and I look like I'm thirty or something. I don't want to be around for another twenty years after you die . . ."

"Maybe . . . maybe you could spend less time as Phantom," she suggested, but even she didn't sound like she believed that was possible. "Or maybe things will get easier in a few years." She didn't even bother trying to tell Danny that he didn't have to do half the things the world asked of him—he would insist that he had to do it, anyway, his hero complex at work.

"You really believe that?" grumbled Danny.

"No, but what are we supposed to do, Danny? Break up just because I'm going to be an old lady when you're still a 'strapping young lad' or whatever?" she muttered, rolling her eyes.

"I—I don't want to break up, Sam," said Danny. "I just don't know what to do."

"Well, we can figure something out," she said. "Or maybe your parents can. They're smart people. But I'm not going to make you choose between me and your ghost half. If I die that long before you, then I'll just have to come back and haunt you or something."

"I don't want you to come back as a ghost," said Danny, smiling faintly. "I can't imagine sucking you into the Fenton thermos. That just seems so wrong."

"Please? You fighting ghosts when you're some fifty year old guy who can barely walk down the street?"

"Oh, come on, Sam. I'm not going to be crippled in my fifties."

"You are if you don't get in better shape, Danny. You still depend on your ghost half too much," said Sam, and Danny felt his smile grow. She always knew just how to cheer him up, or at least how to distract him enough that he didn't dwell on things. "You'd think those moments with Dash would've taught you something."

"Hey! I've totally gotten into better shape . . . or at least better enough shape that I can run away if my ghost powers don't work," he chuckled, and as his laughter died he glanced at his hair in the mirror once more. "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Promise you'll cut my hair again in a few years?" he asked quietly, silently grateful that she hadn't decided to walk away from him now that she knew the truth.

"I promise, Danny," she said, smiling softly at him, and walking over she gave him a gentle kiss.

**A/N: Fluffy one-shot with a dash of angst, and in case you didn't pick up on it, it takes place after PP, which I never thought I'd do if I wrote a fanfic. **

**Since it was a post-PP thing I also did the DxS pairing because it just felt right here; however, I may occasionally do DxV from time to time, too, since I don't really subscribe to one particular pairing, but in general, fluffy romance isn't my kinda thing so I doubt it'll come up very often.**

**On another note, I'm of the belief that when Danny's in his ghost form, he's completely a ghost, so most (although admittedly not all, since I do like to play around with different concepts quite a bit) of my stories will probably follow that line of reasoning. My own theories about how it could work involve a kind of bizarre manipulation of some theoretical concepts in quantum physics . . . right. Won't get into that here, and it's kind of silly since this is the sort of show that doesn't try to provide explanations and prefers to just scream "IT'S SCIENCE, BABY!" any time they need an explanation for, well, anything. (Obviously not literally, of course . . . I mostly just mean that because it's a kid's show, they don't really work too hard to explain how things work beyond throwing out a science term here or there in the same way that Star Trek writers used chronotons, tachyons, etc., to explain much of the "impossible" science on their show. All of the messy stuff on DP like the insanely complicated theoretical issues with the whole half-human, half-ghost business is hidden under a blanket, or, well, lab coat, as the case may be, and my oh-so-curious, need-to-know adult brain wants more than the superglue DNA explanation and so it turns to the craziest branch of science out there to provide only somewhat adequate answers: quantum physics). **

**Right. And now that I've totally revealed what an old lady I am . . . Review, please!**

**And next time I'll try to make my A/N shorter and ramble on less, I promise. ;)**


	3. Broccoli

**Broccoli**

**Disclaimer: It is not I but the carnivorous and herbivorous and therefore omnivorous Butch Hartman whom owns a charming cartoon about an omnivorous specter whose herbivorous honey and carnivorous buddy consistently clash over their competing dietary predilections.**

**And why, yes, I am a _very_ bored nerd. :P**

Tucker Foley prided himself on being a meat connoisseur. He had tasted beef, pork, chicken, lamb, duck, turkey, fish—because no matter what the vegetarians claimed, it was still a meat as far as Tucker Foley was concerned—and had never let a single veggie touch his delicate taste buds. Even as a baby, Tucker Foley knew (believed) that his parents had fed him on a diet of ground up meat rather than the usual mushy baby food made out of squash and broccoli and other disgusting fruits and vegetables that most kids had forced down their innocent young throats.

He was strictly carnivorous, and for many years he had been successful at keeping to his all-meat diet despite the protests of his parents, doctors (as if he'd ever listen to those creepy hospital dwellers, anyway), and friends. The closest he'd ever come to a veggie was a French fry, but since it was fried in animal fat at the Nasty Burger, all was forgiven as far as Tucker Foley was concerned. His singular focus on meat, his promise to never eat anything but something that once had a face, however, ultimately came to an end after that fateful trip back in time when he had been forced to devour that dreadful plant: Blood Blossoms.

The moment those petals had touched his tongue, Tucker had reacted like any good meat connoisseur: he gagged, retched, and wished he could take it all back with every awful bite. Eating those veggies didn't count—it couldn't count. He was still a carnivore. It was just one mistake, and he'd done it to save a friend, his best friend, who had saved him countless times in the past. What was his meat obsession, really, when compared to Danny's life? Nothing. And so he'd made that dreaded sacrifice and forced those blossoms down as quickly as possible, comforting himself with the knowledge that at least he was still a techno geek.

But in his heart of hearts, Tucker Foley knew that one slip-up had been the end of everything, the end of his life as a meat connoisseur, because no matter what he could not admit the truth of what had happened that day to anyone, even Sam and Danny.

That horrible, dreadful, disgusting truth, the evidence of which now sat stashed in his locker like some dirty piece of clothing from gym class that was never meant to see the light of day once it had entered that metal cage. The truth which was so horrifying, so terrifying, that Tucker Foley could scarcely believe it himself most of the time. It was so hard hiding it, too. From his mother, his father, his friends . . . but he had to do it. He had to let them continue to think that he was brave, that the Battle of the Blood Blossoms (as his mind so dramatically recalled it) hadn't scarred him and his precious, pure meat-loving taste buds forever, for if they knew the truth they would never look at him the same way again. All of the respect that Tucker had earned from his family and friends and the jocks who knew him for his specialized palate would be lost forever if his dark secret came out.

Glancing at the clock, Tucker knew that he wouldn't have to wait much longer. Soon the bell would ring, and then he could quickly go to his locker and deal with his little problem as he had every time since that horrific battle. And after that, everything would be fine. Sam and Danny would meet him in the lunch room. They'd never know that he'd done anything at all before meeting them there, and as the weeks passed by Tucker grew more and more confident that they would never discover his secret. After all, his best friend was the best person in the world at keeping secrets since other than some ghosts (and a certain half-ghost) only his sister had managed to discover his secret identity, and Tucker had picked up on more than a few of Danny's tricks about obscuring the obvious since the accident that had given Danny his ghost powers. Still, his new secret definitely gave him a better sense of what Danny went through everyday, of the guilt that he'd never thought he'd feel, but no matter what he could not let this secret come out.

And then, just when Tucker thought he couldn't wait any longer to deal with his problem, it happened: a ringing sound, the rapid tolling of the bell that signaled his first opportunity at relief since just before lunch yesterday. Rushing to his locker, Tucker barely paid any attention to anyone around him, and the instant the hallway seemed to be relatively clear, he opened his locker and pulled out the tiny plastic bag hidden deep inside.

Opening the little bag, Tucker pulled out the object and held it in his hand for just a moment before taking a quick bite. Just one little taste, that was all he needed, and then he could return to his pure, meat eating, meat loving ways . . .

"Am I hallucinating, or did I seriously just see you eat a piece of broccoli?" gaped Sam, who had come looking for Tucker with Danny instead of heading straight to lunch, and looking up Tucker saw her and Danny staring at him and the half-eaten piece of broccoli that was left in his hand.

"It—it's not what it looks like!" he cried, shoving the last piece into his mouth both in a feeble attempt to hide it and because he simply couldn't bring himself to throw it away, and as he stood there in horror because they had now learned his secret, the two of them burst out laughing.

For the truth was simple. After that one, innocent little taste of blood blossoms, the infamous, carnivorous Tucker Foley, the same Tucker Foley who had led a protest against Sam's horrifyingly vegetarian menu, had been turned into a secret plant-loving omnivore.

**A/N: Originally I planned on uploading this super dark, kind of disturbing one-shot that would completely justify my 'T' rating on these stories, and then instead of that particular story cooperating with me it had an energizer bunny moment where it just kept going and going and going . . . At around fifteen or twenty pages, I realized that if I wanted to put something up by the end of the night, I was going to have to do something else instead and put that one on hold for now. **

**So that's where this fairly short, weird little humor piece came from. Silly, right? At least I hope so, since that's what I was going for here. Hopefully by next week I'll have that other one finished, although if it gets any longer, I might just do it as a regular fic instead of a one-shot. Hmm . . .  
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**And now, you know what I'm going to say next: If you have a minute, then I'd love it if you could leave a review. For those of you who have been reviewing, thanks again! I seriously appreciate it!  
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	4. Beautiful Girls Are the Loneliest

**BEAUTIFUL GIRLS ARE THE LONELIEST**

**Disclaimer: Go ahead and double check the credits if you absolutely must. My name's not there because I don't own any part of Danny Phantom.**

As the gorgeous young lady sits outside and gazes at the stars, she knows that she should have gone to bed hours ago, but despite her need for beauty sleep she's just too restless. Her dark hair hangs loosely about her shoulders, her flawless face unusually void of make-up, and her pajamas, although hardly form-fitting, are somehow completely flattering on her lithe frame. Staring up at the sky, she silently hopes that a certain Phantom will fly by and speak to her, and as if the stars had heard her wish, a flash of black and white blurs through the air above her.

"Hey!" she calls, jumping to her feet and waving a hand, and a pair of glowing green eyes turn to look at her, the ghost pausing in mid-flight. "Wait a second! Can I talk to you, ghost-boy?"

"Paulina?" the ghost stutters as he flies down towards her, and she smiles brilliantly at him, simply happy that he knows her name. "Um . . . you're not going to go crazy and try to lock me in a box or something, are you?"

"Eww, no!" she exclaims. "Why would I do that? That's freaky! I just want to talk! Are you busy right now, ghost boy?"

"It's Phantom," he sighs, and she can tell he thinks that she's stupid since he's told her this a dozen times before, but she's not. Paulina simply likes to hear him say his name. "And . . . ugh, I guess I have a minute, but if this is where you tell me that you want me to be your boyfriend—"

"—it's not that, ghost –Phantom," she says, correcting herself out of fear that this time he'll become too irritated and simply leave.

"Then what is it?" he grumbles, and then looking at her more closely, he frowns. "Come to think of it, why aren't you in bed right now? It's really late, isn't it?"

"I can't sleep," she explains, sitting down and gesturing to the spot beside her, and although she expects the ghost boy to refuse he lands gently beside her and sits down. "I was wondering, ghost boy . . . do you ever get lonely?"

"Seriously? That's what you wanted to talk to me about?" he chuckles. "Do you even know what that word means, Paulina?"

"Of course I know what it means!" she snaps. "It's just . . . Everyone thinks that being beautiful and popular means that you have lots of friends and that you're always happy and that everything comes easy to you, but it's not. It's really hard. I spend hours doing my make-up and getting ready everyday just to look perfect—"

"—you should stop that, you know," he teases her. "You actually look a lot prettier without it."

"You really think so?" she blushes, and he rubs the back of his neck nervously, seeming embarrassed that he said anything at all.

"Yes, but that's not what you wanted to talk about, right?"

"No, it's not," she confirms, and then she pauses as she considers her problem. "Well, maybe it is."

"Hmm?"

Biting her lower lip, she looks back up at the sky as she tries to find the words to explain her problem to him. Talking isn't something she's ever been very good at, despite being fluent in two languages, and talking to someone about something so personal, about something she's never shared with anyone, is hard even if that person is dead or someone as understanding and kind as the ghost boy. "There are these three losers in school," she starts again, and she can feel the ghost boy tense up slightly, but she's not sure why and doesn't want to ask in case he might get mad at her. "And I mock them and tease them every day. I help my boyfriend Dash get away with stuffing that loser Danny Fenton into a locker, or I steal that techno-freak—"

"—I think the term is techno-geek, actually—" he interrupts, but she ignores him, pressing onward before she loses the thread she's following.

-Tucker Foley's PDAs and stuff, and I make sure all the other girls in school are nasty to Sam and stick gross things in her locker. I do everything I can to make their lives miserable," she explains, "and yet they always look so happy, and I just—I just . . .I hate it! I hate that they're so happy no matter what me or anyone else does, but they are! And everyday I'm just—I'm just—"

"Miserable?" he offers, but she shakes her head.

"Not really," she replies. "When I'm at school and I'm at cheerleading practice and junk, I'm usually pretty happy, but when I get home I just . . . I just feel so lonely, and somehow I _know _that those geeks don't ever really feel that way."

"You feel lonely?" he says slowly as he thinks about what she's said, and he looks as if he simply can't believe her. "But—but you're the most popular person in Casper High."

"And it doesn't mean a damn thing!" she says, feeling tears beginning to sting her eyes. "It's empty, all of it, and I know that now! I knew it after the way I had to treat Valerie when she became all poor and stuff! I only have those friends as long as I'm rich and beautiful! The day that I'm not anymore they'll all just desert me and it won't be like those losers. They're already friends even though they're poor and lame, and they'll always be friends. But me . . . I don't have friends like that. And every day I realize it more and more and more, and I mean, I should never end up poor and lame but then Valerie did and it made me nervous and I just . . . I just thought you would understand how I feel, ghost boy," she tells him, and now she is crying, the tears pouring freely from her eyes. Normally she'd be embarrassed because her make-up might run a little (even though those sales people and the bottles said that it would never run) and because she's always known that crying is a sign of weakness, but somehow she feels like she can cry in front of the ghost boy right now as they sit together beneath the night sky and that he won't think less of her for it.

"I—um—why do you think I'd know?"

"Because you look lonely, too, Phantom," she replies. "You're like me. You're handsome and strong and popular and people love you and stuff, but they only love you because you're giving them what they want. You're protecting the town and saving us—and don't get me wrong, ghost boy, I think you like doing it too sometimes because you know it's right and you're saving people's lives and stuff—but . . . it's like . . . I want you to be my boyfriend, but even if you wanted to be my boyfriend, you couldn't be, not really. We'd be like one of those celebrity couples that's just together because they look good and not because they really love each other, because . . . you're dead. You can't have a girlfriend, at least not a living, beautiful one like me. And even though you're super popular with humans and stuff, those other ghosts all hate you and someone like me or any other person can't ever understand what it's like to be dead like you and stuff . . . I just . . . we both stand out. We're both different. I'm beautiful. You're a hero. And I just thought that maybe both of us are lonely because in our own way, we're freaks."

Falling silent, Paulina wipes away her tears on her pajama sleeve, her eyes now locking on the ground instead of the sky. Somehow, she feels a little better now that she's talked to someone, even if that person isn't human, and it is then that he puts an arm around her. "I'm sorry, Paulina," he tells her, and looking up she sees his green eyes shining brilliantly. "I mean . . . to be honest . . . I've never really liked you much. You've always seemed kind of mean and petty and, well, um—"

"—shallow?" she supplies, knowing that's what he is thinking since she hears that insult more times in a day from Sam Manson alone than from the rest of the students at Casper High combined.

"Well, yeah," he admits. "And you're not. I mean, not completely, and I know that now because someone shallow never would've noticed the truth." She glances up at him curiously, wondering what he means, but he looks up at the stars as he speaks next, and his voice sounds so tired and so heavy that it makes Paulina want to cry for him, too.

"Because you're right about me. I'm lonely, too."

**A/N: So yes, I'm aware that Paulina's a tad OoC in this, but . . . meh. I just wanted to give a shallow character a little depth, and as for the no Spanish in this, well . . . quite frankly, since I can't speak Spanish, I didn't feel comfortable putting any in here even though she tends to say a word here and there on the show. **

**This fic is also kind of weird for me because she's also just not a character from DP that I typically want to write, or even a type of character that I write at all, but the topic made me think of her since it's often implied that's she's drop-dead gorgeous on the show. I mean, I guess I could've done a fluffy fic with Sam or Valerie or something, but . . . yeah. I wasn't really in the mood to do that this week, and part of what I want to do here is practice my writing, which means doing things that I'm not particularly good at (like writing a fic with a character type I don't love and doing more writing in the present tense, the latter of which I'm starting to think I enjoy more than I thought).**

**And I wanted to make a note that I didn't intend for this fic to be DxP. There might have been a hint of it here or there, but all I was going for here was a kind of brief moment of understanding between two very different people, y'know? So take it how you will, but just know that those were my intentions.  
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**And up next: A Dash fic! (Am I joking? Quite possibly! Tune in next week and find out, lol).**

**Oh, and, uh, review, please. ;)**

**'Til next time!**


	5. Silence Is a Scary Sound

**SILENCE IS A SCARY SOUND**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

'_Twenty-three days_,' thinks Danny as he marks another tally on the white board that he stole from his sister's room weeks ago, and he sighs heavily as he wonders whether he ought to shower and get dressed or not. Is there any point to it anymore? It isn't as if anyone will complain about the smell, yet in the end, he still ends up taking his shower and getting dressed just in case, the sound from the water falling around him providing him with a little comfort, and for a brief instant he can't help but think that maybe today will be the day that the Silence will end.

Probably not.

Heading downstairs once he's done, Danny grabs a box of cereal and some milk as he flips on the radio. Ever since Technus destroyed his ipod he's had no real music to listen to since no stations come through the radio anymore, but even so, listening to the static is better than dealing with the Silence. As he pours himself a bowl of cereal he considers running the water in the sink, too, but then he decides against it since it'll probably just make him need to go to the bathroom or something stupid like that.

"So today," Danny says as he sits down with his bowl of cereal—Rice Krispies once again, a tradition now four days in the making, "I'm going to go to school and see if I can raid the lunch room. I know, I know. I really shouldn't steal food from the school, right? Especially since it's probably not edible anyway . . . but we're almost out of food here, and I'm a student there, so I mean, I'm only kind of stealing it. And it's not like anybody else is going to eat it."

He pauses as he takes a bite, and although he's been trying to avoid it, he can't help but look at the depressingly empty kitchen around him. With a slight sigh, Danny idly taps his spoon on the edge of his bowl as he listens to the soft sound of his soggy, crackling bits of cereal, doing his best to forget yet again that no one else is there and that he's talking to himself, but as usual it's hard for him to ignore it completely.

"Great. It didn't even take a month for me to become a total fruitloop," grumbles Danny, but he doesn't stop talking to himself between bites, for even stating how crazy he's become has become a part of his daily routine, almost like a disclaimer that somehow makes his new habit of talking to himself okay because he's acknowledging that his habit is really anything but okay. "And I _hate _this stupid cereal. I can't believe I'm saying it now, but I'd trade a night's sleep for even one of mom's glowing burgers or some of her French toast. That's how low I've sunk, universe. I'm craving _toast_."

Of course, the universe doesn't answer him, and so Danny grudgingly chokes down the rest of his cereal. He doesn't eat it for the flavor but for the noise. It's the loudest breakfast food there is, or at least it is as far as Danny knows, and once he's done he puts the bowl in the sink, the spoon clattering in a pleasantly noisy way.

And then it's silent except for the static, and the static just isn't enough so Danny starts talking again. "So sometimes I think that I must be dead. Like, really dead, and that this is hell. Because seriously, why does hell have to be a flaming pit or whatever? Why can't it be a totally silent, empty town devoid of all the things that make that town worth protecting from the ghosts who invade? Why can't it be a world where I start going so crazy that I want to eat toast and so lonely that I start talking to myself just to hear something besides static over the radio and my own breathing? Why can't it be a world where I just spend all of my days by myself just wishing for anyone, even Vlad, to come through that door right now?

"It sort of makes sense, too, for this to be hell," he continues slowly, chewing on the thought. "I mean, there's no one in town but I still have power. The water and heat and stuff still works even though I haven't done anything to make sure it keeps on working. Too bad the food's not like that. It'd be nice if it just magically reappeared or something, but it doesn't. I don't know what I'm going to do when it runs out or what's left in all those freezers and stuff go bad. I don't really want to steal from anybody, but I've already finished most of the stuff here, and if I don't steal then I won't be able to eat anymore."

The sentence lingers in the air for a moment, heavy with dread, and Danny rubs the back of his neck. "I guess I can just stay in ghost form forever."

"But I don't think that will work. I've tried not to change back when I fall asleep or pass out, but I always do, and if I always have to be me again then that means I'm going to have to keep on finding food somewhere," he mumbles, yet the depressing thoughts make him no longer want to talk to himself, and so Danny changes forms and lets himself lazily fly up through the ceiling and to the top of the Op Center. It's become another part of his routine lately, since the top of Fenton Works where he sits now is one of the best places in town to watch the sun rise. Although his sleep schedule's been a little abnormal since he's still dealing with ghost attacks on a close to daily basis, he's actually been getting enough sleep for once and usually finds himself awake around dawn or dusk, mostly because without friends to hang out with or school and homework to worry about there's nothing else to do but sleep, and the only thing that's comforting anymore is that the world is still turning. The sun rising and setting is proof of that much, at least.

As the sun's golden rays touch the buildings, Danny anxiously watches and waits for a sign that maybe, just maybe today is the day, yet all of Amity Park is completely still beneath him. There are no birds singing even though the air should be filled with their songs since it's the beginning of spring. There are no dogs barking in the hope that their masters will take them out for a walk, no children laughing or playing or excitedly waking up their parents, no babies crying, and no people out running or biking. There are no cars driving through the streets, sending up fumes, and there are no buses slowly chugging along and picking up students who would rather be doing anything but going to school.

All of Amity Park is empty and still, the Silence permeating every inch of every street. The city has quite literally become a ghost town, and as the days pass by Danny wonders why he stays and continues to protect it, yet the answer's a simple one:

It's because he too scared that the rest of the world is just like Amity, and that if he leaves then all he'll learn is that he really is all alone in the world, that it's not just a ghost town but a ghost planet, and somehow the thought of discovering that his fear of an empty, lifeless world is real is more frightening to him than being alone in Amity forever.

"This must be hell," he repeats, no longer able to stand the Silence, for the Silence is a scary sound, so awful that even the sound of static on an old radio is now comforting to the lonely half-ghost.

It might be easier for Danny if he knew what happened, if he at least understood why he was alone, but he doesn't know. He tried to go to the ghost zone to ask someone, but the portal stopped working the instant everyone else disappeared, and the portal's nothing but a hole in the wall filled with loose wires and an 'On' switch that never works. The only ghosts here right now are the few he had in the thermos the day it happened and the ones that were still roaming free through the city that day, ghosts like Technus, Skulker, and the Box Ghost, and Danny's caught them over and over again dozens of times. The other ghosts . . . Danny's not sure where they are, but his best guess is that they're either trapped in the Ghost Zone or that they ended up where everyone else in town is now. A small part of Danny is scared that his friends and family are dead, that everything that once lived in Amity is gone forever, but it's not a fear he's willing to give into just yet. As he watches the sun, he's still secretly hoping that today will be the day.

And if it's not, then at least he has a few ghosts to distract him.

He wouldn't have to keep catching the ghosts if he kept them locked in the thermos, yet the ghosts are the only thing left in the city that changes, the only thing left that's interesting, and so every day since day six Danny's been releasing them and giving them a chance to wreak havoc on the empty town. Danny is pretty sure that they enjoy it, too. After all, being trapped in the thermos is miserable, and even if they can't really do any of the things they want (for even Skulker can't take Danny's pelt and hang it on his wall since none of the ghosts can get back into the ghost zone and their lairs now that the portal's gone), the semblance of normalcy, of sanity in this disturbingly quiet and lonely hell is better than nothing at all.

And it's not as if anyone except Danny risks getting hurt because of a ghost attack anymore, either, since there's probably no one living left in the world but him, and at this point, he's starting to think that death would be a wonderful alternative to this awful routine.

Yet Danny's not ready to die just yet. After all, dying could easily just mean that he'll become a full ghost and remain here in Amity Park, anyway, in which case maybe death might be worse if one day everyone finally reappears and the Silence finally ends.

"Twenty-three days," he mumbles to himself as he watches the sun finish rising over the silent city, wondering once again if today will be the day that things will finally go back to normal, if today will be the day that his family and all of the other people in town finally return, but ultimately he doubts it, and plunging back down into Fenton Works he goes to grab the thermos to let the ghosts out yet again to kill time until the Silence finally ends.

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><p><strong>AN: Um . . . honestly, I don't know, either. I was in a weird mood when I wrote this one and I was listening to some whacky, creepy music after a short Dr. Who marathon and then didn't do much (re: any) editing . . . And, well, quite frankly that's the only explanation I have, and it's what I'm sticking to even if it makes no more sense than this one-shot, lol.**

**Right. So I'm most likely not going to continue this one is what I think I'm trying to say; however, if any of you would like to pick it up or do something with it (or any one-shot I ever write, for that matter), then feel free. Just let me know first.**

**And review, please! I get this one was weird, but still, it'd be interesting to know what you guys thought might've happened to everyone in town (or alternatively, what happened to Danny and the handful of ghosts that were in Amity the day everyone seemingly disappeared). I never actually made up my mind about it, although I had a few thoughts, and it'd be interesting to see what other people come up with as an explanation for it. ;)**

'**Til next time!**


	6. Hero

**Hero**

**Disclaimer: I might be pretty awful about remembering to write this disclaimer every chapter, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't own Danny Phantom.**

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><p>Two weeks ago I learned that my hero, Danny Phantom, is actually that twerp, Danny Fenton. Danny Fenton! And at first I didn't care. Danny was a hero, after all, whether he was Phantom or Fenton, and even though being half-dead made him more of a little freak, he was just so damn cool as Phantom. It only took like ten seconds for Paulina to wrap her head around becoming a Fenton, and maybe five more for Star and Kwan to start following him around and treating him like he was the king. And okay, Fentonia saved the world. He deserved a little adoration, and I was willing to give it to him for a while, too.<p>

But in the end it only took a week for me to want to pound him again.

I used to like Phantom because he was like _me_. We were both heroes—he was the ghost that protected my home town, and I was the football hero that scored the winning touchdowns in every game. He brought us security and the knowledge that we could walk home without fearing the ghosts, and I brought Amity Park fame, happiness, and pride. I was the guy that people looked up to, that every kid wished he could be and that every loser envied. I was just like Phantom, but now . . . now that little dweeb has stolen it all!

Nobody—and I mean _nobody—_gives a damn about a football star in Amity Park. Everything I've ever done is now meaningless because Amity Park is the hometown of the famous Danny Phantom, hero of the god damn world and the half-ghost, half-human wonder. My parents barely acknowledge that I exist. My former friends and teammates don't talk to me anymore. Suddenly it's not money or sports that make you cool, and it's all because that god damn nerd has turned everything upside down. Now it's all of those losers like Manson and Foley who people care about, who they respect, who they practically freaking worship when it should be me.

That's the worst part. Nobody respects me anymore! Now that everyone knows that Fenton was faking being a wuss all along, nobody thinks I'm tough or strong. The nerds all snicker at me behind my back. They know that I won't touch them now, because if I try it, Fenton will swoop in as Phantom and save the day. He keeps telling me that I ought to have learned my lesson, that being a _bully _won't help me, but he doesn't get it. It's this school that's messed up, not me. Bullying those nerds was a way of establishing who was on top, who was the king, who was the best. Now that I don't have that, now that no one gives a rat's ass that I'm strong—for a human—or a great football player—for a teenager—I am _nothing. _Suddenly I'm the loser, and it just makes me so angry that all I want to do is beat the crap out of Fenton until he's all ghost.

But that's the worst part. Now that his secret's out, now that everyone knows he's Phantom, I can't even _touch _him unless he lets me do it, and everyone will know that the only reason he's taking the hit is because he's willing to take it. My punches will barely faze him, my fists won't leave a lasting mark, and in the end, I'll just look worse. And I know what Phantom's like, because I know what Fenton's like now, maybe more than anyone. If I attacked him, he would let me hit him, because that nerd—that nerd actually pities _me_, Dash Baxter, and I can't stand it! I want to hate him for it, but I can't, because I know it just makes him even better than me!

And as if that nerd can sense how much I hate him now for stealing away the fame and praise that used to be mine, he comes up to me in the hallway, and the way he walks clearly shows that he knows that he is now the king. "Hey, Dash?"

"What do you want, Fenturd?" I snap, arms crossed, and I want to pound him so badly that I can feel myself shaking.

"Actually . . . I wanted your help," he says slowly, and for a moment the old nerdy Fenton is shining through as he stands there, rubbing the back of his neck and shifting his weight slightly from foot to foot as if he expects me to hit him, and man do I want to so badly.

"You're a hero, Fentoad," I rumble, "and I don't want your pity. You don't need me for a damn thing."

"That's not true!" he exclaims. "The thing is . . . do you remember that time that we both got shrunk? I mean, I was in my ghost form and stuff, but—"

"—I ain't that stupid," I interrupt, glaring coldly at him. "So what?"

"Well . . . I . . . I kind of never stopped relying on my ghost powers, even after that," explains Danny slowly, "and I realized that the only reason why I got through that was because of you. So I guess I should say thanks."

"Pretty sure you already did, Fentonia," I say, slamming my locker door shut, "so if that's it, then why don't you go back to being the hero?"

"Because—because I also wanted to know if you'd help me," he repeats. "I mean . . . would you be willing to train me?"

"Train you?" I repeat skeptically. "You're a ghost. You don't need my help. You have superpowers that let you do anything you damn well want."

"But they don't always work," Danny explains. "Sometimes they act up, or my enemies find ways of shorting my powers out, and I'm tired of getting beaten because my human half is so weak."

I stare at him, still not sure why the hell he wants me to help him instead of that creepy goth chick or Kwan or someone that actually likes him. "You're the world's savior, Fenton," I say, for once not tagging an insult to the end of his name. "You can probably get the world's best personal trainer to come and help you for free."

"Maybe, but I'd rather you do it," says Fenton, "because I already know that you're good at it, and I already know you. I mean, sure, you're kind of a jerk and you bullied me for years, but . . . but I'd still rather have you do it, Dash. Honestly, this whole being popular thing kind of creeps me out, and I feel like if you can take some if it back, then I might be able to relax a little bit more, too."

"So what you're saying is that you want me to train you so that I can become famous for whipping the human half of Danny Phantom into shape and so you can be left alone?" I can see him staring at me, surprised that I'd catch on so quickly. People always think I'm a total moron, and okay, I'm not so bright, but I'm not that stupid, either. "Fine, Fenturd. I don't think it'll work the way you want, but I'll do it."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, well, you'll still be famous, but if I can benefit from that, then who am I to say no?" I sneer, smirking at him.

"Oh . . . well, thanks, Dash," he tells me as he begins to walk away.

"Hey, Fenton!" I call, and he glances back at me uneasily. "You'd better not be late tomorrow, 'cause I'll totally pound you into the dirt if you are. Five o'clock, on the football field."

"And if there's a ghost?"

"Then you bring that damn thermos of yours and prove that you're not full of it," I tell him. "I'm not gonna tolerate a loser like you blowing me off."

"A loser, am I?" he says, chuckling.

"Yeah, Fenturd," I reply. "You are a loser. But now, so am I."

"Dash?"

"Forget it, Fentonia. Five o'clock," I repeat, and although I know he's doing this out of pity for me, I guess I can take it a little, 'cause as much as I want to pound him, I know that now I'll at least be able to run him into the ground until he collapses instead.

And he is, in the end, still a hero, no matter how much I now hate him.

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><p><strong>AN: I really wanted to do a Dash fic because I wanted practice writing that type of character. It's much easier for me to write Danny or Valerie, for example, because they're closer to what I'm used to writing than someone like Dash. So if he's a little OoC (as in likely way more eloquent and smarter than he's portrayed in the show), well . . . I tried my best. This one was tougher than you'd think.**

**This was also an attempt to do something a little different with Dash from a post-PP perspective. I figure Dash is a pretty confident guy ninety percent of the time, but after PP (when Danny would probably be stealing most of the spotlight that used to shine on him), I assumed that might get called into question after a week or two of being on the sidelines, so . . . here it is. Right.**

**Anyway, review, please!**

**'Til next time!  
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	7. Corrupted

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

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><p><strong>Corrupted<br>**

The sun is setting as Danny slumps forward in his chair, his eyes locked on the brilliant glass chess pieces that are gleaming in the twilight on an elegantly crafted, custom chess set that probably costs more than Jazz's first year at college will. Every piece is personalized and meticulously hand-crafted, from the knights to the rooks to the queens and the kings, and even though the designs of the pieces should make no difference, it's been throwing Danny off the entire time.

"Less than thirty seconds, Daniel," taunts Vlad. Unlike Danny, he's the image of perfect calm as he sits up perfectly straight in his chair, his hands folded neatly on his crossed legs as his eyes remain focused on Danny. A hint of a smile plays about the corners of his mouth, and Danny knows that the man thinks he's won this game.

"It's Danny," he mutters, focusing on the board since he knows that Vlad's just trying to get him to lose his concentration. As usual they're playing speed chess, and although Danny has been getting much better at the game in the past half-year, he can't help but be distracted by the billionaire's charming new chess set. He knows the moves that he has to make to put Vlad into checkmate and it's the first time since they started playing six months ago that he thinks he might stand a chance of winning, but in this case victory means sacrificing his queen.

And somehow it's just a lot harder to do that when his particular queen is modeled after one of his two best friends. Making Danny's queen in Sam's image amused the billionaire to no end, especially since Danny still hasn't exactly admitted his feelings for her, and it's been putting Danny off throughout the entire match.

"You could always give up now, my boy," the billionaire whispers. "You've put up an excellent fight."

"Forget it, fruitloop," he grumbles, moving one of his pawns, and sure enough this one is modeled after Paulina, one of Danny Phantom's many adoring phans. It's a stall tactic and a rather poor one—he's essentially giving Vlad an extra move—but Danny just doesn't think he can sacrifice his queen so easily, even if it means winning the game.

"What a frightfully appalling move, little badger," chuckles Vlad, shaking his head as he moves his own queen, and the design behind this particular piece was hardly shocking to Danny, because honestly, who else would Vlad make his queen but Maddie? The piece is so exquisitely crafted that if it were life size then Danny might actually believe it _was _his mother, and seeing it on Vlad's side of the field beside the tiny, perfectly crafted image of Vlad Plasmius wearing the Crown of Fire is hardly comforting.

Although Vlad has a full minute, he takes only ten seconds to move his remaining knight—modeled, quite naturally, after the Fright Knight—to topple one of Danny's bishops (a little figure of Jazz that's holding a psychology book to her chest in one hand while pointing at her enemies with the Fenton Peeler in the other). Biting his lip uneasily as he watches Vlad remove the piece from play and hit the timer, Danny considers whether or not he ought to go for the win yet again. He knows that the pieces are nothing more than that, that Vlad deliberately had this chess set designed to mess with his head, yet unfortunately for Danny it's working spectacularly. Even though he knows that these are nothing more than pieces on a game board, he just can't get over each pieces' eerie likeness to his allies, friends, family, and fellow ghosts, and every time he ought to sacrifice a piece or make a certain move, he hesitates.

Vlad, on the other hand, seems completely undisturbed by the designs. No doubt the eccentric billionaire had already adjusted to the pieces long before he ever pulled out this particular set for Danny and him to play with, although Danny supposes that it's kind of flattering that the man's finally starting to see him as an equal. After all, why bother with such silly psychological warfare if Vlad thinks he can still win fairly?

"Time's ticking, little badger," says Vlad, who seems to get a perverse pleasure from pointing out how long Danny takes to execute his moves with each round.

"Obviously," Danny grumbles as he moves his king two squares. His king is naturally modeled after Danny himself in his Phantom form (without the Crown of Fire, though, a subtle nod to the fact that Vlad will never completely see Danny as his equal), since Vlad never planned on playing anyone else using this particular set, and after he sets it down he picks up his rook, a mini-model of the Fenton Ops Center, and moves it to the square left of his king. Danny's own rook now sits directly in line with Vlad's king. "Check."

"Castling, eh?" sighs Vlad, shaking his head as Danny hits the clock. "You know it's generally better to do that earlier in the game, my dear boy. I hope you weren't restricting your rook's movements for the sake of some foolish, poorly thought-out scheme."

"You're the one who lectured me about being more patient about a dozen times before today," Danny mutters as he reconsiders his last move, but no matter what Vlad says, it was Danny's best option just then. "Just make your move, cheese head."

Smiling, Vlad moves his king to the side and for a few minutes there's little obvious progress as Danny and Vlad move their pieces across the board. Of course, what the man doesn't realize is that Danny is finally forcing himself to get over the shock of seeing his friend's face staring back up at him from the board, and although he's nervous that he's not seeing quite as far ahead in the game as he thinks, he moves his queen into position with only the slightest hesitation as he prepares to sacrifice her to Vlad's dread knight.

"Check," says Danny as he hits the clock, and Vlad smirks.

"Foolish boy. I'm amazed that you had what it takes to let your friend die so easily," he teases as he falls for the trap and sweeps Sam off the board, and although it still makes Danny feel a bit sick to think that he sacrificed his friend to achieve victory, he quietly reminds himself that it's just a game and it doesn't matter. It's not as if he'd ever do that in real life, right?

"It's not actually Sam, Vlad. It's just a chess piece that you made to mess with my head, and guess what? It's not working," he grins as he moves his other bishop (this one is shaped like Tucker, and is complete with his own PDA in hand).

"Face it, little badger, I'm corrupting you more and more every day," Vlad says as he moves another piece—a rook modeled after his castle in Wisconsin—and hits the timer. "You never would have sacrificed your dear Samantha before, even if that particular version of Miss Manson was nothing more than an apparent piece on a chess board. After all, you know just how much a battle and real life can be like a chess match or else you wouldn't be here right now playing against me."

Although the billionaire's words trouble him a little bit, Danny knows that he's just trying to make him read more into this stupid game than he should. It's another psychological ploy, right along the same lines as modeling the pieces after his friends, and Danny refuses to fall for it. The only reason he's here now is because he knows that Jazz is right. If he wants to ever have a chance of beating Vlad once and for all, then he needs to get to know who Vlad is beyond his creepy obsession with marrying his mother and killing his father. Vlad, of course, wasn't oblivious to this when Danny turned up at his house for the first time all those months ago, and given their past he is unwilling to do anything more with Danny right now than call a temporary truce and play a "harmless" game of chess with him each day, believing that little by little he'll be able to get Danny to see things from his perspective instead. Although the prospect of playing chess everyday was less than thrilling for Danny, he ultimately agreed if it meant that he could learn a little more about the man in the process and perhaps convince Vlad to see things his way instead.

And much to Danny's surprise, he eventually started to get pretty good at chess once he actually committed himself to Vlad's lessons. He's hardly a master player, yet he's gotten good enough in the past six months that he can at least put up a fight against Vlad and see beyond a single move. As the two continue to play through the rest of their match today, it's only when he's a single move away from winning that Danny notices a flaw in his strategy, a tiny hole that could set him up to lose once again, and it all comes down to Vlad's queen that looks so disturbingly like his mother.

If Vlad sacrifices his mom, then Danny's entire strategy will fall apart. He'll be able to checkmate Danny in three moves, regardless of what Danny does, and looking up at the billionaire Danny watches the man's face very closely as the elder halfa studies the board. Although Vlad's poker face is practically perfect, he can still see the distress on Vlad's face as he contemplates his next move. He _knows, _after all, that Danny has him practically trapped, and for the first time it's Vlad who is actually making the most of his limited time.

"Thirty seconds, Plasmius," taunts Danny, unable to suppress a grin, and the man's eyes flash red as he glances up at the boy. Vlad's never been a particularly good loser, but before now that hasn't mattered much since in chess, at least, he's never lost a match to Danny.

"Oh, very cute, Daniel," Vlad mutters. "Using my own weapons against me."

"It's Danny," he idly corrects, knowing full-well that the billionaire will ignore him yet stubbornly refusing to give up on that particular point since he hates being called Daniel too much. It's a matter of principle for Danny.

Yet just as the clock hits ten seconds, a light appears in Vlad's eyes as he spots the weakness. Moving quickly, his fingers reach out to touch the piece and to turn Maddie into a sacrifice to win the game, but instead of moving the queen his fingers hover there momentarily as he bites his lip. Much to Danny's amazement, the billionaire ultimately sighs as he moves his fingers over to another piece—his other knight, modeled after Skulker—and he pushes it feebly across the board in a useless, hopeless move.

Hitting the timer, Vlad then looks up at Danny as he waits for the coup de grâce, but Danny's too stunned to strike. He can't understand why Vlad wouldn't sacrifice his piece. It's not actually his mom, after all, it just _looks _like her, and even though the resemblance is striking it's hardly enough to stop a rational person from making the necessary sacrifice to win the game. "Forty seconds, little badger," says Vlad quietly, and shaking off his shock Danny quickly moves his final piece into play.

"Checkmate," Danny whispers, gently toppling the man's king, and for a long moment silence reigns between the two of them before Danny finally works up the courage to ask him. "I don't get it, Vlad. You could have _won_. I know that you saw that move."

"I could never sacrifice my queen, Daniel," he replies as he picks up the Maddie figurine and gazes at it longingly, his finger idly stroking her hair. "But apparently you can. Well done, little badger. You may yet become twice the villain that I'll ever be."

"It's just a game, fruitloop," Danny mumbles, brushing it off, but the billionaire's words haunt him as he gazes at the toppled figurine of his best friend lying beside the board, her violet, glass eyes looking as if they're full of pain over his betrayal.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: It may not be necessary, but I feel the need to state right now that I'm not a terribly brilliant chess player, a fact which is probably obvious to anybody who read this and actually plays chess. I mean, I can kill a noob using the Scholar's Mate and I can play well-enough that I don't embarrass myself against the average person, but, uh, yeah . . . Vlad Master's (or in this case, even Danny's emerging) level of brilliance for the game? Not quite there, lol. Hence why I kept this relatively simple even though chess-which is a game with rules that you can learn in an afternoon-is incredibly complex. I also didn't really map out the final part of this game, either, which is why there aren't references to specific locations for the pieces on the board throughout most of this one-shot. I thought about looking up a game and doing the story around that, but I was too lazy since the game would've had to conform to what I wanted for the sake of my plot and I wasn't willing to take the time to look for a possible game that might do what I needed.  
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**Yup. So that's that. Anyway, review, please! ;)**

**'Til next time!**

**Note: Edited 01/11/2012 for a small mistake (Thanks VampireFrootloopsRule for spotting it and letting me know!)  
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	8. Just My Luck

**Just My Luck**

**Disclaimer: Pff, as if you guys don't know what I'm going to say here. I totally don't own Danny Phantom.**

It wasn't fair.

Of course he knew that life wasn't fair, that even when it hands you lemons you can't make lemonade unless you also have at least some water to mix it with and some sugar so that it doesn't taste horrifyingly sour. And the same type of people who often spouted that nonsense were the sort that tended to be handed very few lemons in life, unlike him. The only thing that he'd ever been given were lemons, one after another, and frankly he was sick and tired of trying to make lemonade.

Just once he wanted to have something _wonderful _handed to him. Just once he didn't want to have to work his way to the top, to sweat and struggle for everything in life. Just once he wanted to be the student who managed to score the scholarships without spending hours studying for every test, or to be the heir to some magnificent fortune.

And more than anything else, he just wanted to be able to have that ease, that natural way of speaking to girls that his friend seemed to have, as opposed to his half-stuttering ramblings that made less sense than the gibberish spouted by a patient in an insane asylum.

In college, it seemed, it finally happened.

She was not just one of the girls. She was brilliant. Beautiful. Sweet. Her laughter was soft and sincere, and her smile could bring a light to his eyes that didn't exist before she came into his life.

And even though he was a little scared, he found that he could talk to her. Be friends with her. Laugh with her. Cry with her. Back then he didn't know that he was obsessed. Wouldn't have even considered the word. Love, though . . . He was definitely madly in love with her.

It took him weeks, but eventually he got up the courage to ask her out. He wanted to do something extraordinary for their date, but he was a college student, and not an exceptionally creative one at that. In the brutal technical sense, he was a genius. He could do the kind of math that only she could keep up with. But ideas? Not his forte. Yet in college that didn't matter, either, for his friend was an idea machine. His math was a lamentable mess, but the ideas, the schemes, the projects . . . Sometimes he wondered how his friend could develop such astounding inventions on the spot.

Sometimes he was downright jealous of him.

Yet they made a good team. And she made them better. Sometimes he would get frustrated with his friend, after all, and she would step in and smile at him, the kind of smile that she reserved only for him, and she would help calm him down, help him to see reason. She had ideas, like his friend, but she could also do the mathematics. Most of the time, she could even keep up with him as he worked through complicated formulae and problems that their professors struggled to understand, and she always backed him up when he told his friend that the numbers didn't work, that the math just didn't support his mad dreams.

Until that day. On that day, she decided to support his friend and his foolish idea. On that day, the two of them were both too excited to listen to reason and rationale and science, despite his assurances that it wouldn't work. It was ridiculous, after all. A ghost portal? There was no such thing as ghosts, or a ghost zone, and even if ghosts did exist, he doubted that their theory about using spectral energy to power the device after the initial start-up would work. The whole thing was absurd.

He was hoping to ask her out afterward, anyway. He could forgive her for these little fantasies and daydreams—no one was perfect, after all, but she was so close that if she occasionally slipped up, he could forgive her. He had always been a little better, a little more practical than her, after all, and that wasn't surprising. She hadn't been handed quite so many lemons in her life, and he was pretty certain that she would want some comfort after the experiment failed.

Ultimately, though, his whole plan went awry. He was blasted with the energy from the portal. Instead of spending what should've been his big night out with her, he ended up bedridden in the hospital with a bad case of ecto acne. They came to visit him once, and, as if his life hadn't gotten bad enough, he was handed the one lemon that he could never swallow, the one lemon that he could never properly turn into lemonade, for this particular lemon was already rotten at the core and past the point of being made into anything useful.

This lemon, quite simply, was the news that his paragon of beauty, his mathematical goddess, had chosen his idiotic friend instead.

He lost his temper. Shrieked at them like a madman. Told the pair to get lost, to leave, to never come see him again. And as the pair hurried out of the room, he felt the temperature drop as the lights flickered and a strange energy pulsed around his hand. The accident, it seemed, had changed him more than he realized, and as he sat there looking at the red glow in his palm, he wondered if perhaps life had handed him more than just lemons for a change.

This time, it seemed, he'd been given the tools to make some lemonade after all, and even as he felt himself plunging into a darkness that he would never escape, Vlad Masters couldn't help but smile.

**A/N: Feels kind of weird to write a story with no dialogue ('cause I love writing dialogue), but I was kind of experimenting with it as well as the kind of long metaphor bit with the lemons . . . primarily because I've always hated that expression, lol. Of course, that's also just what I like to do with fanfiction—experiment with different styles of writing, techniques, etc. I dunno if that's weird or not. Anyway, I'm assuming that it was slightly confusing at the start because that was my intent, although I have no doubt you smart people figured out that I was talking about Vlad within a couple of paragraphs or so. :)**

**Anyway, sorry it's been a while since I updated. I've been focusing on my other story lately and I ended up getting another job (I'm up to three at this point . . . you think two would be enough . . .), so updates might get a little sporadic. I'll try to keep 'em coming at least once a week or so, but if it's a bit longer than that, well . . . life stuff comes first. ;)  
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**And, as always, please review! **

**'Til next time!  
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	9. I'll Be OK

**I'll Be OK**

**Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, don't own DP. Moving on.**

The words were like a curse.

_I'll be okay._

How many times did he say it? How many times did he tell her that everything will be fine, that he'll always come home, that he'll survive no matter what?

How many times did she believe him?

"Damn it, little brother, it's not fair," she whispers quietly, her lower lip trembling as she fingers the small flash drive and tries not to cry. Jazz knows what she has to do and what she has to say, but she just doesn't think she can do it. It isn't fair. Why does it have to be her responsibility? He's the one who said that it wouldn't matter, that he'd be okay and that she didn't need to worry, but of course, if he actually believed that then he never would have left her with the stupid thing in the first place.

Turning it over in her hands, Jazz can't believe how heavy the little flash drive feels or why her brother picked her for this duty. Sam and Tucker would've been the better choice. They are both stronger and braver than she ever is and loyal to a fault . . . but of course, they aren't actually family, at least not from her parents' perspective, and when her parents learn the truth it will be best if those two aren't around since Jazz knows they'll take it out on Danny's friends, and they don't deserve that.

Jazz, on the other hand, knows that she does. She never should have let Danny continue to put himself in danger like that. She should've stopped him the day she'd learned the truth, or at the very least, she should've told their parents, but instead she listened to her clueless little brother and kept it a secret from them, and now—

_Tap tap tap._

Flinching at the gentle knock on the door, Jazz almost drops the drive as she stutters a quick "Come in!" Even before the door opens, Jazz knows that it's her mother from the way she knocked, a sound that is more like a woodpecker than anything else. Every time her dad knocks, on the other hand, it sounds as if he's attempt to siege her room like it's a medieval castle full of ghosts.

"Jazz? Are you coming down for dinner, sweetie?" her mom asks, completely oblivious at first, and it's only after the question passes her lips that she notices the tears in her daughter's eyes. "Jazz? What's wrong?"

"It's—um—here," she mumbles, shoving the flash drive at her mom before she loses the guts to do it, and as Maddie sits down next to her on the bed she gently plucks the fragile device from her daughter's fingertips. "There's something on that you need to see."

"I don't understand . . ."

"Please, mom . . . just look at it first. I can't . . . I just can't," Jazz mumbles, sobbing gently, and although Maddie isn't sure what's wrong she gently embraces Jazz, holding her daughter closely while she cries. For a few minutes they do nothing but sit there, Maddie silently comforting her daughter as the tears seem to pour down her face without end, yet eventually Jazz pulls away and wipes her tears hastily aside with the back of her hand.

"Did something happen?" asks Maddie uneasily when her daughter finally seems prepared to speak, although the question comes close to sending Jazz into a second cascade of tears.

Jazz gives a slight nod, refusing to meet her mother's eyes. "Just—just watch the video on that, mom. You can use my computer if you want . . . I know that I should just tell you, but if I say it, then that means . . . that means . . ." She shakes her head slightly, biting her lower lip. "Please, mom."

"I . . . Alright, Jazz, if you insist," she sighs, wanting to argue that it would be much easier if Jazz would simply just tell her what's wrong, but from the way Jazz is looking at her Maddie knows that whatever the little flash drive contains must be important. It has to be connected to the reason why she's crying—perhaps someone caught her on tape doing something foolish, or maybe someone said something awful about Danny or played some horrible prank on him. After all, Jazz is really protective of her little brother and wouldn't be able to take something like that lightly.

Sitting down at Jazz's computer, Maddie quickly plugs the drive into the USB port and taps her fingers gently against the desk while she waits for the computer to recognize the device. Not for the first time she idly thinks about how they ought to get Jazz a new computer when she finally goes to college—there is no way, after all, that this old piece of hardware will be good enough—yet just as she's about to say something to Jazz about it in a feeble attempt to cheer up her daughter, the computer recognizes the drive and gives her the option to view the files. Although Maddie expects there to be a dozen files to choose from, there is only one—a single video entitled _Just in Case version 54_, with a screenshot of her son sitting calmly on his bed as the icon.

And for the first time since she came up the stairs, Maddie begins to wonder if maybe whatever happened is more serious than just some silly schoolyard fight or high school bully, and as she clicks on the video she frowns slightly as she tries to think about the last time she saw Danny . . . was it this morning? It must have been this morning, just before school . . . he was running late and Jack gave him a ride because of it. Although this doesn't completely eliminate her uneasiness, it makes her think that maybe this video won't be so bad after all, that maybe Jazz is simply overreacting to something minor instead.

At least, she sincerely _hopes _that Jazz is overreacting, because if she's not, then nothing good can come of her watching this recording of her baby boy.

"_Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad . . . Ugh . . . You think I'd be better at this by now, but I just never know how to start," _he mumbles nervously, rubbing the back of his neck.

"_Just relax, Danny!" _calls Jazz from off-screen, and Danny rolls his eyes.

"_Easy for her to say, this was mostly her stupid idea," _he grumbles_. "I keep telling her I'll be okay and that there's no point to this."_

"_Please, Danny? Just in case?"_

"_This would be easier if you weren't in the room!" _he determines, and Maddie hears a sigh as the camera screen shakes for a brief moment while Jazz puts it down on her brother's desk.

"_I can take a hint, little brother, although in the future all you have to say is please," _she teases, and for a brief moment Maddie catches a glimpse of her daughter moving in front of the camera and leaving her brother to himself. Somehow, this only makes Maddie feel more worried about what's to come.

Taking a deep breath, Danny watches her leave for a moment before continuing._ "Well, she's probably still listening at the door, but I guess this is a little better," _he mumbles, and Maddie smiles since she knows that Danny is probably right. It's not like Jazz to just leave and let her brother be—she simply enjoys psychoanalyzing him way too much.

"_So . . . uh . . . This video is officially the 54__th__ video like this that I've made," _begins Danny slowly as he stares down at his hands._ "It's easy to remember because I've done one every week since Pariah Dark's invasion. Sometimes I think this whole thing is sort of stupid, but even if you guys never see this Jazz says that it'll be good practice for when I finally tell you the truth one day."_

"_But, um, if you are seeing this . . . and you might end up seeing it, no matter what I tell Jazz and the others and myself . . . then I hate to tell you that it means that at some point I failed," _he continues, his gaze still locked on the floor, and Maddie desperately wishes he'd look up at her. Her hands are trembling as she sits there now, completely fixated on the image of her son on the screen, and secretly she's hoping that this is all just a joke, some crazy prank that her kids are playing on her and Jack.

One look at Jazz's tear-stained face, however, tells her that it's not. Jazz just isn't that talented an actress.

"_It means . . . It means that this is now the only way left for me to tell you the truth," _he says softly, and Maddie forces herself to ignore the implications of that statement for now. Her brain simply won't let her process it, and besides, her son is still speaking_. "See, during that fight with Pariah Dark, things got really bad for a while. I kind of figured that I wasn't coming back from that one, no matter what I told everyone else, and I realized afterward that if something had happened to me then I would've died and you guys never would have learned the truth."_

"_And I just wasn't okay with that," _explains Danny, and it seems to Maddie that he's finally finding his rhythm, that he's gotten past his initial stumbling block and knows what he needs to say._ "So Jazz came up with this idea. I guess, according to her, soldiers sometimes tape messages for their families as part of a just in case scenario, as something to leave behind for their families in case they die or get kidnapped or whatever. I kind of felt like doing this might be a jinx, but I had a hard time telling Jazz no so soon after the ghosts invaded, and after I started doing it I just found I couldn't stop, that I didn't want to stop. Maybe I didn't need to update it every week, but . . . I don't know. I guess I was worried that if I didn't, something else might've changed and you guys would need to know about it. Besides, Jazz is right. This is good practice."_

Suddenly Danny chuckled softly, his blue eyes glancing briefly at the camera, and Maddie smiled at the image of her nervous, precious baby boy._ "See, this part's always hard. I bet right now you're confused, and it's my fault because I keep on talking around the one thing I need to tell you more than any other right now. Well, make it the second thing, 'cause the first thing . . . Umm . . . And you better not laugh at this . . . The first thing I need to tell you is that I love you, Mom and Dad. You're the greatest parents I could ask for, even if you're sort of clueless and get way too caught up in your inventions sometimes, but then again, my friends always say I'm kind of clueless, too, so at least I know where I get it from." _

At this Maddie's smile only grows, but her happiness fades the moment her son speaks his next line, and the words emerge from him slowly, as if they're being dredged up from the bottom of the Marianas Trench._ "The second thing . . . The second thing is that I've been lying to you two for over a year now. I'm not the person that you think I am."_

"_I'm not even _what _you think I am."_

He pauses, then, and takes another breath, clearly struggling with what he has to say. Maddie's amazed that it's so hard for him since he claims to have done this 53 times before, and honestly it makes her wonder what her son might have to say that can be so horrible._ "You see, um . . . well, do you guys remember that lab accident I had when the portal first started working? That's pretty much when this all started. I kind of lied to both of you that day about how bad my accident was. I wasn't standing outside of the portal like I told you two. I was standing inside of it when I stumbled and hit a switch or something on the wall."_

"_And, um . . . I think I kind of died."_

"_What_?" whispers Maddie, for a moment feeling as if her own heart has stopped at her son's words, but her son isn't actually sitting there in front of her and so he doesn't hear a word. Instead, he simply presses on with his story, slowly but surely dragging the words up as he forces the truth upon her whether Maddie wants him to or not.

"_I'm not really sure if I did, to be honest. I've never been sure. Saying that I'm half-dead always sounds sort of silly and undead isn't any better, but being half-dead or half-alive is the closest I can come to explaining it," _he continues, and then he chuckles._ "Tucker's actually got some scientific explanation behind the whole thing, if you want to hear it, but I bet you guys can work out the details on your own if you even want to after this."_

_His smile fades, then, as he wrings his hands together and a shiver passes through him. "You probably won't, though."_

"_Because—well—no. Hang on. That part can wait, although by now you might've figured it out since I sort of already told you why I'm doing this," _he sighs, shaking his head._ "Still, even if you have figured it out, please don't stop listening yet. You guys need to know this, or at least . . . I need you to know this. Consider it a last wish or whatever."_

"It's not possible," mumbles Maddie as the connections in her brain reluctantly begin to form and her son pauses for a moment on the screen, because of course she can remember exactly what he said at the start, about soldiers and about being kidnapped or dead, but . . . he can't be dead. He simply _can't. _

Yet she's broken out of her thoughts when her son starts up again, and now he looks like he's going to be sick as he speaks. "_Mom, Dad . . . whether or not that accident killed me, I don't really know and at this point, it probably doesn't matter anymore. But what I do know is that afterward I ended up with ghost powers. I could walk through walls, disappear, fly . . . that last power was really cool, by the way. There's nothing better than soaring through the night sky. It was the best part about being a ghost." _A faint smile appears on his lips for a moment as he thinks about it, but it quickly vanishes as he continues with his confession.

"_Or half-ghost, I guess. That's what the other ghosts called me and the others like me," _Danny explains._ "Halfas. Half-ghosts. We're basically just people that can switch between a human form and a ghost form, and while one of us has used that power for some seriously messed up schemes, I chose to use that power to fight for the town. After the portal started up because of me, I felt like I had a duty to protect everyone who was now in danger from all of the invading ghosts, and so . . . I fought them."_

"_Every day."_

"_I know you guys knew I was up to something, even if you didn't know what, mostly because my grades were slipping and I wasn't getting much sleep anymore and I sometimes did a bad job hiding it when I got hurt," _admits Danny, and Maddie stares at him, transfixed as he continues on with his story and vaguely remembering her son's odd behavior over the past year or so. As much as she doesn't want it, every word that he's saying is making an awful kind of sense. _"As long as you didn't know what, though, I didn't care. I . . . I don't know why I didn't tell you. I mean, I told myself it was because I was scared that you wouldn't accept me, but there were a few times when you sort of found out and you did, so I guess even I knew that fear was kind of groundless. I guess . . . I guess I mostly just liked having the secret. It was kind of cool, having this alter ego and saving the day with the help of my friends, and even though I wanted you guys to know so that you'd be proud of me, I didn't want you to know because I knew you'd worry about me, too, and that you might even try to stop me from doing what I thought was right."_

"_I was also worried how you'd see yourselves. I know you guys don't know it and didn't mean to do it, but . . . but you hunted me from time to time . . . To you two, I was nothing more than a ghost," _said Danny, his fists clenching slightly with every syllable,_ "and I—I didn't want you to think it was—I just—it was my fault that you did. That's all. Please don't blame yourselves, okay? I know you never would've hunted me if I'd told you the truth."_

"_Of course, I'm guessing that if Jazz let you watch this, then it's probably not your hunting skills that caught me at last, anyway," _says Danny, and his gaze darkens._ "Because really, that's what this whole video is about, and there's only a couple of reasons why you might be watching it now. See, during the Pariah Dark incident, I almost died fighting against him. I came really, really close . . . terrifyingly close . . . and it was the first time, the first fight, even, where I actually thought that I might not make it and that I could die doing this hero thing. Somehow, it just didn't really hit me before then. I mean, sure, I got hurt and stuff, but my ghost powers helped me heal super fast, so I never worried about it much."_

"_With Pariah Dark, though . . . and then _him _. . ." _Danny shudders slightly, shaking his head. _ "No. I won't talk about him. Not now. Because if you're seeing this, then that shouldn't matter, anyway."_

At this point, Maddie knows what her son is going to say next. It's something she's known all along deep down inside, something she's instinctively known from the instant that she walked through that door and saw Jazz crying as she handed her this video confession, and she almost hits the stop button so that she won't have to hear him say the words. She's already heard him say it once, but that was different. He was talking about the past. This, though . . .

"_I know that you're smart," _says Danny, as if reading her mind, and he looks directly at the camera now._ "By now you probably know why you're seeing this and what it means. . . As much as I kinda hope that I'm just captured or something, chances are that I'm not since I know that Jazz and the others have kept my secret even when it might've been a little crazy for them to do it . . . so that means that if you're listening to me now, then I'm most likely dead. Like, really dead."_

He falls silent for a brief second, but his gaze doesn't waver and his blue eyes continue to focus on Maddie, piercing her from beyond the grave._ "I don't know how I died this time. I don't know if I'll come back as a full-ghost, or if I'll move on or something. Being half-dead hasn't exactly given me as much insight into the afterlife as you'd think."_

She doesn't want to believe it. Even as he says the words, she wants to scream and shriek and smash the computer, as if somehow venting her anger and frustration and sadness will invalidate his words, but it won't, and she doesn't. Instead, she continues to sit there and watch as he brings his confession to a close._ "But I left this so that no matter what, you'd know the truth about me and you'd hear it from me and no one else. I . . . I tried my best. I screwed up a lot—I know that—but I was always fighting for what I thought was right, and hopefully, I died fighting that way, too. Before I finish this, though, there's one more thing you should know. See, I told you that I had a ghost form, one that you two have seen a dozen times before. I know you guys don't like him very much, but I think it's just because we've had some misunderstandings. I wish I could be there to clear everything up for you, but I guess Jazz will have to do it for me now."_

Suddenly a blinding flash of light hits the camera, making Maddie wince, and when she looks back she sees a set of eerie glowing green eyes and white hair and the all-too familiar face of Phantom staring back at her.

It's only now that she realizes that it's the same face as her son's.

"_I'm . . . I'm Danny Phantom," _he finishes quietly._ "And even though I'm now gone, I hope that you guys can continue on without me. After all, Amity Park still needs someone to protect it, and there's no one better qualified than you guys. And, um, just know that I meant what I said before, okay? I love you guys dearly, and whatever happened to me, it's not your fault. None of this—" _he says as he gestures to himself, and then there's a bright flash of light as he changes back to Danny Fenton, _"—is your fault."_

"_And if you guys could do just one thing for me, then I'd really appreciate it," _he tells her. _"It's nothing big, just . . . just tell Sam and Jazz and Tucker that I'm sorry and that I love them, okay, and that no matter what might've happened to me, it wasn't their fault, either. I chose to fight the ghosts invading Amity Park all the time while knowing that one day I might not come back from it, and even though I wish I could still be there with you guys, I don't regret doing it. The best thing I did with my life was keeping my family and friends and everyone else safe, and I guess if I had to die someday, then there are worse ways to die than getting killed while protecting the people that you love."_

Her son mumbles something incoherently at this point about ending his video, yet Maddie doesn't pay attention since she's finally broken down, sobbing as the ghost of her son smiles at her through the camera for one more second before the screen finally goes blank.

And as much as she wants to argue with it, as much as she wants to deny it, she can't, for both she and Jack were there this afternoon and both of them saw that ghost Danny Phantom—or rather, her son, her poor sweet baby boy—get destroyed.

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><p><strong>AN: Weird. Never thought I'd write a fic where Danny died, but the idea struck and I just kind of went with it . . . hmm . . . Initially I thought about just diving right into the video, but it felt weird to provide no explanation whatsoever, so hence the bit with Jazz at the beginning. And obviously I didn't explain exactly what happened to him, but meh. I liked where it ended, and this was more about the revelation than about the potentially gory details of his death.  
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**Anyway, not much else to say tonight, other than the usual plea for reviews. ;) **

**'til next time!  
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	10. Falling in Love

**Falling in Love**

**Disclaimer: A piece of super special awesome virtual fudge to anyone who can guess what this is going to say . . . I'll even give you a few hints. It has to do with me, Danny Phantom, and how I totally don't own it.**

**Or YGOTAS, for that matter . . . kinda quoted it in the disclaimer there. Kinda.**

In life, there were only a few things that Jack Fenton loved more than ghosts: Maddie, his kids (especially his precious Jazzerincess), and fudge.

Lots and lots of fudge.

Although everyone knew about his eerie fixation on the delicious dessert, no one had ever bothered to ask why it existed. His strange obsession with the treat was as odd as a ghost being obsessed with boxes, yet even Jack Fenton's kids just took it for granted that their dad had some weird chocolate craving that could only be satisfied by eating a piece of fudge.

And although that was at least partly true, Jack hadn't always been quite so fixated on that particular dessert.

His love of fudge all went back to Maddie. What didn't, really? The first time Jack had met Maddie was during their college days. Although he'd been a little skeptical about her at first, ultimately she won him over. After all, Maddie was a beautiful, amazingly intelligent woman who was also interested in the paranormal, in ghosts and the ghost zone, and although some people thought Jack was kind of naïve and foolish, Maddie somehow managed to see past that. She knew that Jack was brilliant, that he had a mind designed to invent and that could come up with incredible (and somewhat bizarre) ideas, and that he was capable of doing great things. Her faith in him, her friendship and her trust, made it easy for Jack to be friends with her.

It hadn't taken long for the two of them to become more than just friends, either. After Vlad's terrible accident, very little time passed before the two of them started dating. Some people laughed at them, especially Maddie's friends, for they just couldn't understand how the two could actually work as a couple. Jack, after all, was always super excited, super cheerful, and super hyper. He bounced about the world like a young puppy, anxious to explore and to stick his hands into things that he did not quite fully understand. But Maddie was a good match for him. She was calmer. She was thoughtful. She helped turn Jack's ideas into reality, and she helped keep him from getting killed by his own curiosity like a certain cliché cat. She was perfect in every way because while she compensated for his faults, he, too, compensated for hers, for Maddie tended to be a bit overly cautious and less-creative than her husband. She often over-thought things, too, and Jack couldn't help but wonder if that was the reason why Maddie was such a terrible cook.

For no matter how hard she tried, Maddie's cooking was absolutely horrifying, practically inedible, and Jack, in his normal, harmless, and unfortunately somewhat tactless way, had just so happened to point it out the first time she had ever tried to make him an extra special dessert on their six month anniversary: fudge.

Maddie, of course, had burst into tears. She'd tried so hard, had worked at it and done everything the recipe said. It should've been easy. Maddie was good at science, after all—why shouldn't she be good at baking, at performing an aspect of cooking that was more like chemistry than art? Maddie couldn't understand it. Neither could Jack. But as she sat there sobbing during their date, Jack had simply smiled and told her, "Mads, I don't care how bad your cooking is. You don't need to be good at it. You're already an amazing woman, and I can cook okay."

"But I wanted—I wanted—to be able to do something special for you, Jack," she'd said softly, wiping the tears with her sleeve and streaking her make-up all over her beautiful blue blouse. "I want to be able to cook food that you'll love."

"Then keep trying," he'd told her. "If you want to do it that badly, then just keep practicing, Maddie. Someday, you'll make the best fudge in the world and I'll never want to eat anything else again."

"I doubt that," she told him, chuckling gently as a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but sure enough, Maddie kept trying. Every week she would make a little fudge, every week Jack would try it, and every week she managed to do a little better. And finally it happened. One night when they were sitting quietly at her apartment, she set a piece of fudge in front of him with a smile on her face, wondering as she always did if this was the day that Jack would finally tell her that enough was enough, that she should stop before he got sick or ended up getting diabetes from all of the sugar.

"Are you sure you're not tired of my cooking yet?" she'd asked softly as she sat down across from him, and Jack smiled at her as he picked up the piece of fudge. The instant it touched his tongue, a brilliant grin spread across his face, and suddenly he jumped around the table and scooped her up into a huge hug, making her laugh.

"Jack, what're you doing?"

"Don't you get it, Mads?" he chuckled. "I told you that if you ever made the perfect piece of fudge, then I'd never want anything else in the world again, and you've done it, and that means that it's finally the right time to do this, Maddie . . . although I gotta say I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon. Not that I don't have faith in you, but, uh, you know."

"Jack?" she asked, cocking her head to the side curiously as he put her down and knelt before her, and she was surprised that he seemed so nervous, something which made her feel a twinge of uneasiness as well. Jack was never nervous, after all—his confidence was boundless.

"Mads," he began slowly, his eyes locked on hers as he gazed up at her, "I've never loved anyone as much as you, or anyone's cooking as much as yours. I've been waiting for this day for a long time. I knew you could do it, Mads, and I knew you'd never give up. And I don't want anyone else to make fudge for me again, not ever, so . . . Will you marry me, Maddie?"

Tears poured down her face as one of the brightest smiles the future Madeline Fenton would ever wear crossed her face, and throwing her arms around him she cried "Yes!"

And every week, Maddie Fenton would make a huge batch of fudge for her husband, the food that had become his favorite food in all the world, and the dessert that had become the best thing that Maddie Fenton could, and ever would, make in her kitchen.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Right . . . So this story is a bit odd for me. I don't usually write these kinds of shamelessly fluffy and romantic stories, but, um, yeah. This one just sort of happened, but I think I'm okay with it since the last one was very, very angsty. Admittedly I may be channeling my own recent baking disaster here through Maddie's failed attempts at cooking, though . . . It seriously sucks when you screw up making your boyfriend's birthday cake.  
><strong>

**And yes, it has been a lame and somewhat frustrating couple of weeks in my little corner of the universe. -_- With any luck, though, things'll get better soon. They usually do. ;)  
><strong>

**Anyway, I hope that you guys enjoyed it nevertheless. Chances are you won't be getting more romance anytime soon-I'm already working on the next one-shot, and if nothing else, it_ definitely_ doesn't belong to that particular genre. No clue when I'm gonna have that or the next chapter of my story _Lost_ finished or uploaded, though, since I'm working like crazy the next few days, but hopefully it'll be soon.**

**I think that's it for now, other than the ever-constant plea for reviews. **

**'Til next time!  
><strong>


	11. That's the Truth

**That's the Truth**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.**

"It's hard not to live in awe of my son," stated Maddie slowly, eyeing the director suspiciously, but the man didn't say a word. Having spent years working on lame reality television programs, he'd learned that it was best to just prod people a little bit rather than to keep asking questions. Eventually, they'd say something worthwhile, and if anyone had something to say, it would be the people who knew Danny Fenton before he became Danny Phantom. No one else was in the room with them as Maddie began to pour her heart out, because ultimately, even she realized that making this confession was for her son's own good.

Danny needed to hear what she had to say just as much as those people did, and if participating in this silly Danny Phantom special was the way it had to be done, then so be it. Everyone else had agreed by now, so it wasn't like she could back out now.

"At fourteen years old, my son, Danny, became a half-ghost. Although it still upsets me that he didn't come to Jack and I right away, I suppose I can understand his reluctance. We did sort of run around with our bazookas in hand, proudly proclaiming that we would rip ghosts apart molecule by molecule, and we did name him public enemy number one. I guess he just thought that we wouldn't accept him, and as painful as it is for me to realize that for two years my son didn't trust Jack or I enough to believe that our love for him was strong enough to overcome even our harshest of prejudices, I can't say I blame him."

"And then there was the day we learned the truth, for at just sixteen years old, my sweet, baby boy saved the world. I look at him and I can't help but think what an amazing person he is. I love him so much, and seeing the good he's done . . . how could I do anything but accept who and what he is? It would have been so easy for him to abuse his powers like Vlad, but instead he continually sacrificed everything for the good of this town, for his family, and for his friends . . . My son's a hero."

"But I'm scared," she admitted quietly as she stared down at her hands neatly folded on her lap. "I'm scared because I see the cuts and the bruises he comes home with now so much more clearly than I ever did before, and I realize that they're not just scrapes he's getting because he's clumsy, or just bruises from the neighborhood bullies . . . They're battle scars. Each cut, each scrape, and each bruise is just another reminder that every day, someone or something is trying to kill him, and I—I don't know what I'll do if one day they succeed. I want to tell him to stop, but I know that he won't because my son's a hero."

She looked sadly at the camera, then, her eyes sparkling slightly with tears that she was holding back as best she could. "And isn't that supposed to be a good thing?"

* * *

><p>"I don't know how to deal with the truth about my son," sighed Jack at length, looking unusually somber. Normally the man was like an over-excited puppy, bounding happily around without an obvious care in the world, yet today he looked as if he was slowly being crushed. The chair was dwarfed by his massive frame, completely invisible from the viewer's perspective, yet the director would not change it for the world. He wanted the people to see this giant of a man who was the tiny Phantom's father, and besides, it didn't seem like the small chair bothered Jack. If anything, he sat in the chair as if it was actually too big for him.<p>

"I've always believed that all ghosts are evil, that every specter ought to be ripped apart molecule from molecule," Jack explained. "And then my son comes along, a half-ghost, and he disrupts everything I believe in by protecting the citizens of Amity Park and saving the world from the Disasteroid."

"I'm proud of him, of course. He's done the Fenton name a whole bunch of good, and he's done incredibly noble things for being just a scrawny kid with a few neat powers."

He paused for a moment as he ran a hand through his hair, which, if possible, looked a bit grayer now than it did in the weeks before the Disasteroid incident. "But a small, small part of me wishes he were evil . . . because then that would make accepting who Vlad became so much easier.

"I thought that Vladdie was my friend, you know. I trusted him, loved him like a brother, and would've done anything for him until that day when I found out he'd spent years trying to kill me and take my wife away from me. And trying to take over the world? I don't even know what he was thinking. Vladdie had practically everything," sighed Jack as he wearily shook his head. "I was so angry that I did something stupid, something I've been questioning everyday and that's been eating away at my conscience as powerfully as I used to gnaw at a big block of fudge, and no matter what I can't bring myself to tell Danny that I did something so cold-hearted that it makes me feel more like the evil ghost that I always believed Phantom to be than the good ghost that Phantom actually is."

"It would be easier if Vlad had been my friend once and his ghost-half had just made him evil. If my son were bad now, then I could believe that it was because he was part ghost, and that would mean I could believe that Vlad became evil because he was part ghost. But my son's not. He's noble, good, kind, and strong. A hero in every sense of the word. And that means that it wasn't the ghost powers that made Vladdie into a horrible, corrupt jerk."

"It just means that he was always an awful jerk, that the good I saw in him probably never even existed. It means that the man I called my best friend has always been my worst enemy," said Jack, "and now I've done something so bad that maybe I actually do deserve to be hated by a man I thought of as family."

"I left him in space to die alone," he announced, staring straight ahead unblinking, and the director let out a small, sharp gasp, for Jack had told no one about this before except his wife, "and I don't regret it even half as much as I actually should."

* * *

><p>"So that day in Antarctica I learned that Danny Phantom is actually Danny Fenton," grumbled Valerie, her arms crossed in front of her as she sat up unnervingly straight in the chair. 'My ex-boyfriend, my shy, clumsy, adorable friend, is actually that horrible ghost who destroyed my life, who drove me to become the Red Huntress or whatever the newspapers have decided to call me. I kinda hope it's the Red Huntress. That's a much better name than what they gave "Inviso-bill" when he first appeared," she chuckled, but her smile didn't last very long.<p>

"At first, all I wanted to do was to keep on hating him. Even as I stood there at the North Pole with everyone else and smiled and applauded, I just desperately wanted to hate him for what he'd done to me and my dad," explained Valerie bitterly, not looking at the camera. "The Fentons always said that if you were a ghost, then that meant you were evil. Ghosts didn't think in terms of right and wrong, just in terms of their obsessions and how they could fulfill those desires that had become the entire point that their existence depended on. It was easy to hate him, to want to destroy him. He wasn't technically alive, after all, so that meant that he wasn't human and it wasn't wrong for me to hate him."

"Not to mention how he lied to me and pretty much everyone else about who and what he was for years," she mumbled, and she seemed strangely unsure of herself. "But then someone reminded me that I'd been lying about what I did, too. About the ghost hunting. About the equipment and my sponsor who turned out to be a heck of a lot worse than Danny Phantom. I'd be lying now if I said that I didn't wish he had trusted me with his secret when we were dating at least, but, well, I guess I can't blame him for not wanting to tell the girl who spends half the time hunting you that you're actually a half-ghost or whatever."

"And even though I'm still kinda mad at him for everything, I hope—well, I hope that somehow we can be friends again after all of this," Valerie said. "I hope that Danny can forgive me for working for that jerk and for hunting him for these past two years. I really had no idea that Vlad was like that, you know. He used me, and I—I hate him. I hope that wherever he is now he's suffering for what he did to me and Danny and the rest of the world."

"I guess, though, that I do owe that jerk for one thing," said Valerie, "and it's the same thing I owe Danny for, too. Because of the two of them, these half-ghosts or whatever they are, I've become one of the best ghost hunters in Amity Park. Because of them, I found a purpose to my life that went beyond just being the first one to get the newest designer handbag or shoes. And I guess . . . I'm grateful to them for that. Especially Danny. I know now that he never would've hurt me, no matter how much I hunted him or tried to destroy him. He's a good person. He's always been a good person."

"I just wish I would've realized that sooner."

* * *

><p>"<em>Great Expectations! <em>The day that I found out . . . Oh, my poor, poor student," said Lancer softly, shaking his head as he hunched over in his chair. "I had no idea that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were one and the same. How could I have? If I'd actually known what Danny was up to, there was no way I would allow it to continue. I know that he's a hero and that he's used his ghost powers for good, that he's saved the town and all of our lives, but he's still just a kid. He still deserves to have a normal life, at least as much as possible, and he shouldn't be out there fighting."

"I, perhaps more than anyone else, can see the toll that his heroism has taken on young Daniel," Lancer continued. "His poor grades, his exhaustion, the bruises and the injuries . . . I feel like a failure. I knew for two years that something was wrong, but I simply couldn't figure out what. The normal methods—detentions, suspensions, even the occasional leniency—simply didn't work with Mr. Fenton. He always just seemed to accept it, as if it was something that couldn't be changed, something as inevitable as the sun rising, and now I know why. Once he'd started defending the town, he simply couldn't stop. We, as the citizens of Amity Park, came to depend upon Danny Phantom."

"And now, I'm asking that we, those same citizens whose lives have been saved by Phantom countless times, allow the poor boy a chance to have his own life back for just a little while," pleaded Lancer. "He's fought for us and protected us for two years. The least we can do is give him two years to finish school, to graduate beside his friends, and to hold his head high. But I suppose . . . I suppose whether or not Danny actually lets us help him is his choice. From what I've seen of him, from what I know now, I doubt that my heroic student will simply stand by while we fight for him, even if that's what we choose to do. He can't help but be a hero."

"And really, is it even in our power to stop him from doing what he wants to do?"

* * *

><p>"I was one of three people who knew the truth about Danny-well, besides the ghosts," began Jazz, looking calm and confident as she stared straight at the camera. She was the first one who didn't seem nervous or uncertain when she spoke, but then again, Jazz had gotten much, much better at lying and hiding her emotions. "Sam, Tucker, and I were his secret keepers, his guardians, his medics, and his support group when he needed us to be. I actually didn't know at first. I found out during this incident with this creepy ghost psychiatrist—and yeah, Spectra, I'm blaming you for making my brother reluctant to talk to me or anyone else about anything going on in his head anymore, so you better watch out because if I find you then-"<p>

"—Jasmine?" the director interrupted suddenly, and the redhead flashed him a sheepish smile.

"Right. Sorry," she apologized. "So I found out one day by accident when I happened to catch him transforming outside. At first I wanted to confront him about it, but I figured that I should let him tell me in his own way and in his own time. I thought—I thought it would be better somehow, and that I would be able to help him from the sidelines until he trusted me enough to tell me the truth."

"But eventually he did learn that I knew the truth when this really awful ghost attacked," continued Jazz. "And he tried to include me and to be a good brother, but, well . . . I never was very good at fighting ghosts. I had my moments, sure, but I tended to capture him in the thermos more than whatever enemy we were fighting that week. So after that I mostly just switched to support roles. I covered with our parents, I treated his injuries when he got hurt and his ghost powers just didn't heal him fast enough, and I tried to be someone that he could talk to when things got tough. It wasn't easy. My brother doesn't really like to open up to anyone except his friends."

"But it's okay," said Jazz. "Now that everyone knows the truth, it's like this weight has just been lifted off of him. I mean, there are days when I miss being one of his secret keepers, but I know that the truth coming out is the best thing that could have happened for him. He's just a lot happier, more confident . . . just better. And I couldn't be prouder of my baby brother. He's a hero."

* * *

><p>"The accident was terrifying, dude," started Tucker. "We thought that the ghost portal didn't work and that it'd just be a kind of cool picture, you know, but then he pushed the button and that scream . . . I've never told anyone this, but there are days when I can still hear his screaming echoing in my head. It's not something I ever want to hear again, because that sound—that sound made me think for one, brief second that my best friend was dead."<p>

Silence echoed within the room for a moment, but before the director pressured him Tucker managed to find his voice once more. "I don't think I've ever been more terrified in my life, except for maybe those minutes at the North Pole when the Disasteroid was passing through the earth and when the speeder crashed and we thought that maybe, this time, he actually _was _dead and everyone else was going to be dead soon, too."

"But Danny's tough," continued Tucker. "Like, really tough. He's survived more than anyone I know, and I don't just mean because he's a half-ghost and heals super fast, either. He's mentally tough, too. Clueless sometimes, but always well-meaning. Always helpful. Always wanting to do what's right. He put up with years of detentions and bad grades and sleepless nights for us."

"But that should be obvious, you know? He did save the world, not to mention everyone in Amity Park like dozens of times over by now," said Tucker, chuckling slightly, but his smile didn't last. "I kind of worry about him. Sometimes I think he might take this being a hero thing too far. I mean, the super powers and all are really cool, but I've seen him get hurt. I've seen him come closer to death more times than I'd like. It happens a lot less now. He's gotten better at controlling and using his powers, and now half the guys that were hunting him are helping him instead, but I still worry about him. He's my friend. I don't want to lose him."

"I guess he is a hero, too, but . . . but he's also a person," stated Tucker. "A human being, just like the rest of us, no matter what kind of powers he might have. And I'm scared that people are going to forget that, that in a few years . . . that in a few years they'll stop looking at Danny and seeing him as Phantom, the hero who saved the world, and instead start looking at him as a half-ghost just like that Vlad Master's guy who tried to destroy everything."

"That's the real reason why I built those statues, you know," he finished, almost as an after-thought. "I wanted everyone to remember Danny as the hero that saved the world, and not as just another terrifying half-ghost."

* * *

><p>"Hi. You all know me as Sam Manson, aka that 'creepy Goth chick that Danny Phantom's dating,"' began Sam irritably. "Or maybe you know me as one of the few people who knew the truth about Danny's secret since I was there the day that it happened, the day that he was reborn as Danny Phantom. And I bet you're probably hoping that I'll sit here and spill every little secret about Danny, from what his favorite color is to what his favorite power is."<p>

"But that's not why I agreed to do this," Sam said after a brief pause. "I'm not sitting here doing this stupid interview or confessional or whatever so that it can get printed in some trendy teen magazine. I'm doing it because I love Danny."

"And I'm worried about him. I always . . . I always hoped that someday the world would be able to know the truth about him and accept him for who and what he is," said Sam, her hands clenched tightly on her lap, "but now I'm getting scared that there are some people who will never accept what he is because of that jerk Vlad. It's like there are those that see the person Danny really is, and those that just refuse to see him as anything but another horrible ghost. And Danny . . . well, Danny doesn't care if the whole world accepts him or not. He's just happy that his parents have and his friends and family have embraced who and what he is and will continue to stand by his side."

"But I know it's not enough," Sam stated coolly. "The Guys in White are knocking on the Fenton's door every day, asking about Danny and wanting to take blood samples and do other "tests." And I'm just scared. I'm scared that they're trying to find a way to classify him as something inhuman, as something more dead than alive, so that they can do whatever they want to him. I'm scared that one day I'll go to see Danny and he won't be there anymore because they'll have taken him and locked him away somewhere."

"And I hate it so much because I've hardly ever been scared of anything. I'm Goth, you know? The things that tend to scare people are the things that I look for and embrace," she continued. "But even if you're not Goth, even if little things like spiders and snakes do scare you, Danny's ghost half still shouldn't be something you should fear. He's a hero. He's saved the world more than once, you know, and just about everybody in this town dozens of times. He's a better person than most of us, a better human being than pretty much anyone else I've ever met or will probably ever meet."

"So please. I'm asking—no, I'm _begging _you—don't let those jerks take him away. Don't let them hurt him, or experiment on him, or shackle him because he's different," Sam pleaded, and there was a passionate fire burning in her eyes more brilliantly than it ever had before. This wasn't a mere animal right's protest, after all. This was her defending her boyfriend, the man she loved, and she would stand up and say anything and everything to keep him safe. "He might have ghost powers, but he's still a person, too. A human with feelings, with desires, and with hopes just like everyone else that he shouldn't have to give up because of one stupid accident."

"So please, please, don't let them do it. Don't let them hurt the one person who represents everything good that exists in this world. Don't let them hurt Danny Fenton just because he was brave enough to tell everyone the truth about being Danny Phantom."

* * *

><p>"My name is Danny Fenton, but most of you know me as Danny Phantom," he began, standing uneasily. This time the director chose not to put a chair in the room—it's the only 'interview' in which one wasn't placed—but it was because he wanted Danny to stand above the others both figuratively and literally. This was the one that everyone had been waiting for, after all.<p>

Unfortunately, Danny mostly just looked uncomfortable as he continued on, shifting his weight back and forth and sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. The director almost wanted to ask Danny to transform into his Phantom half, but he knew that Danny would refuse. It was too important for them to see him as a mere human right now, what with all of the debates going on in the government about what to do with this most dangerous specimen. "Most of you had no idea who I was before the Disasteroid, or at least, you didn't know that Phantom and Fenton were one in the same. It's not surprising, really. Even though I wasn't very good at keeping my secret, that sort of thing is hard to believe. Half-ghosts? It sounds like something out of a lame comic book or something."

"But it's real. I'm Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom, half-ghost, half-human whatever," he continued as his eyes flashed briefly, and he was growing more confident as he spoke. His hands were now at his sides, and he'd stopped squirming so much. It was now easy to see Phantom even in the all-too human face of Danny Fenton. "And it's kind of weird, but sometimes, I feel like Danny Fenton is actually the ghost. To keep my identity a secret, I spent hours and hours trying to make my human half as invisible as possible, as unnoticed, as unimportant, and as boring as I could. And it worked, sort of. My teachers couldn't help but notice me a little at first since I was that kid who was always cutting classes and stuff, but eventually they just gave up and most of them ignored me. To everyone else in town and especially at school, I barely existed at all. I was just another loser beneath their notice, just one more kid who got shoved into lockers when a jock had a bad day. I was the freak from that weird family who was as shunned as a leper. I was that creepy kid who looked too pale, too tired, and too jumpy for someone who came from a good family and a good life, and so no one wanted anything to do with me. Most of the time, people just pretended that I didn't exist."

"Danny Fenton was a ghost."

"And while Fenton faded, Phantom became more human," he chuckled, running with the analogy, and now he looked comfortable as he continued to speak. "People noticed him. They began to talk to him, to think about him, to want to know more about him, and they sort of breathed life into the half of me that should have been invisible and unnoticed and dead. It was weird, living one life as a kind of celebrity and another as this normal, boring kid. But I didn't mind."

"Of course now everyone knows all about my secret identity, so it's not like Danny Fenton's invisible anymore," he groaned. "I can't even go to my house without being followed by a pack of Phan girls. I think Sam's just about ready to kill a bunch of them, especially that one that tried to take the thermos as a souvenir after my fight against Skulker the other day. Which, by the way, don't ever do that again, okay? I need that thermos to keep on protecting the town."

"That is, as long as the Guys in White and the rest of the world will let me do it," finished Danny, his blue eyes seeming to smolder as he spoke. "See, I might be the hero of this world, but I'm still a half-ghost, half-human freak like Vlad was. And those guys, well . . . they're a little nervous about letting a sixteen year old superhero run around. I don't know why it matters so much now. I'm only here to do my best, to do good and protect the ones I love. I'm not here to take over the world, or to hurt others, or whatever. I'm just a human kid with weird powers who wants to keep his hometown safe."

"So you see yourself as a superhero, then?" asked the director, remaining off-screen and prompting the boy when he'd fallen silent. It was one of the only times that he spoke throughout the entire process, and he wasn't sure yet whether or not he'd edit out his question later.

"Kind of, yeah," admitted Danny. "I have weird powers. I save people. Isn't that what a superhero does?"

"Of course. But you have to understand why people are nervous after what Vlad Masters did," said the director.

"Yeah . . . which is why I'm here to say something that I know my friends and family won't like very much," said Danny. "I know that my powers make people nervous. I know that I can't get rid of them without killing myself," he lied, for he'd done so several times before but it wasn't as if anyone but his friends actually knew that, "and so, if the Guys in White and the rest of the world insists, then I'll do whatever you ask to make you guys feel better about having me walk around. My first duty, my first responsibility, has always been to keep people safe. And if it's possible for me to make you guys feel safe, too, by doing something as simple as wearing a bracelet that suppresses my powers or something, then I'll do it."

"But only on one condition."

"If the world needs me, if my town needs Danny Phantom, then you have to let me fight. I don't want someone to die because I couldn't use my powers to save them. I'll do anything else you guys ask, but please, just make sure that if people need me to be there, then I can be there. All I want is to help people."

"But why?" wondered the director, and Danny looked at him and flashed him one of his all too familiar smiles.

"Because it's the right thing to do."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: And that's that.**

**Been a while for those of you just reading my one-shots, eh, guys? I honestly have no idea where this came from . . . well, maybe it was mildly influenced by Marvel's Civil War and the bit where Peter Parker reveals he's Spider-Man to the world. I've been reading through it again since the Avengers movie just came out, and I'm kind of an absurdly huge fan of comics. It's sure as heck not the one-shot I had planned a few weeks (months?) ago, and it's definitely not what I had in mind when I started this one, but, uh . . . yup. It is what it is. I feel like it's more like a collection of drabble-esque confessions from the friends and family of Danny a couple of months after Phantom Planet, with a whole bunch of hints about what I think would've happened after Phantom Planet (some of those thoughts are original, and some are totally not), than a real one-shot. I kind of offered a loose explanation and justification for the disconnected bits of whatever you want to call this . . . shot. Or drabble-shots. Or w/e. Right.**

**Meh.**

**And for whatever reason, my brain kept insisting on jumping between present and past tense in this one. I think I corrected it and got it all into past tense, but, uh . . . yeah. I won't be terribly surprised if someone tells me I missed one. I probably should've edited it a bit more, too, but . . . yeah.  
><strong>

**Anyway, as always, please review, and thanks for being patient with me. Life's been crazy. ;)**

'**til next time!**


	12. Get Up

**Get Up**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.  
><strong>

Lying on the ground, he couldn't open his eyes. The back of his head felt wet and there was something dripping nearby. For one moment he thought it was raining, but then he remembered that he was supposed to be inside. It couldn't rain inside.

'_But it always rains in the movies when the hero dies,' _he thought idly, his mind barely managing to form a coherent thought, and he half-laughed, half-coughed at the stupidity of it. All these years he'd fought the good fight and never gotten seriously hurt before, but now . . . It was supposed to be a quick, easy battle. It was supposed to the kind of fight that he liked best, the kind where he barely fought at all, and yet as he'd entered the room he'd gotten his head smashed in by something, some ghost. Was it Skulker? Technus?

"As long as it wasn't the Box Ghost," he mumbled, but the words came out garbled as he tried to focus.

"Did you . . . Oh, my god," whispered someone, a girl . . . was it Sam . . .? No, the voice wasn't quite right. This belonged to someone older, and besides, Sam wasn't supposed to be here right now. She was at something . . . a charity dinner or something . . . He couldn't remember.

"You're alive! Oh, thank god, you're alive!" cried someone, grabbing him, and he wished he could tell them to stop. Whatever she was doing hurt so badly, and there was more rain—no, not rain, tears—dripping unpleasantly onto the back of his neck. "I thought you were dead, after Ghost X—er, I mean, Skulker—hit you . . . there's just so much blood . . ."

'_Oh, it's Jazz,' _he noted idly. Even after all these years she had trouble getting the names of the ghosts right.

"I'm okay," he mumbled, not meaning it at all, but he was spitting out so much blood as he tried to talk that the words didn't matter much at all. He really hoped he wouldn't have to go the hospital after this . . . he hated hospitals, especially after that ghost bug incident.

"Look, I know it's tough, but you need to stay awake, okay?" she told him. "I don't want to move you right now. I'm not sure if—I'm just—you're hurt really badly."

'_Understatement_,' he thought bitterly, and if he could've shaken his head, he would have. "Where's Skulker?" he tried to ask, worried that the ghost was still hovering nearby and might hurt Jazz, but it was stupid to try. Nothing he was saying sounded like words at all.

"I—Look, Tucker, I don't know what you said," Jazz whispered, and hearing his own name shook him somehow. Until she'd spoken it, he couldn't actually remember what his name even was. "But Danny's still out there fighting, and we need to get this defense system down or to at least recognize Danny's ecto-signature so he can get in here and save Dani from Vlad. I managed to catch Skulker in the thermos so we don't have to worry about him anymore, but Tucker . . . I can't get this system down, and I'm-well, I'm just no match for Vlad. You're the only one who can crack this defense, and I know that you're hurt, but Tucker, if we don't figure this out, then Danny's going to get hurt, too."

'_I can't . . .' _he thought, letting out a long groan. His brain could barely function right now, the pain was so bad, and he wasn't sure he could even open his eyes. There was no way he could get a shield down. Danny was going to have to figure something else out, make some other—

"Tucker!" came a shriek in his left ear, and he let out a low moan as Danny's voice echoed painfully through his head. "I can't hold off these guys much longer! If you don't get that shield down then we're all doomed!"

_Doesn't he know I'm dying?' _wondered Tucker idly, but then he realized that Danny probably had no idea. There was no way his sister would tell him that in the middle of a ghost fight. If Danny got distracted by something like Tucker dying, then there would be more than one corpse on the ground at the end.

"Tucker!"

"He's a little busy right now, Danny! We're doing our best, but you're going to have to hold on a little longer!" said Jazz, and Tucker was amazed at how much better she'd gotten at lying. If he hadn't been lying half-dead on the ground, then he would've believed her, too.

"Damn it, Jazz, we don't have any longer!" snapped Danny, and Tucker wished he could tell him to shut up. His voice hurt so much as it echoed through his head, and it was making it hard to sleep. No matter what Jazz said, resting was the only thing Tucker wanted to do now. After all, hadn't he done enough? Wasn't dying to save the day enough?

Of course, the day hadn't actually been saved yet, and that was the problem.

"Tell Tucker to hurry up before we're all dead!" snapped Danny.

"It's a little late for that," mumbled Jazz, and cracking open an eye Tucker could just barely make out Danny's big sister looming over him, her orange hair hanging in a loose mess since somewhere along the way her headband had gotten lost. There was something strangely beautiful about the way her hair cascaded around her face even though her eyes were puffy and red from the tears. "Please, Tucker, please, get up. Or tell me what I need to do. Or something. I don't know what I have to do."

"I can't," he mumbled, coughing.

"Come on, Tucker. I wish—I wish I didn't have to ask this of you, but you can do this, okay? You just need to get up. You're a techno-geek, a genius, the best hacker I've ever met, and you're the only person who can do this right now," she said, leaning in close, and he felt something cold and metallic shoved into his hand. Even without looking, even as messed up as he was, he knew what it was:

Susan. His precious, precious PDA, fourth of her name, and the most powerful piece of tech that he owned.

"Sit . . . me . . . up . . ." he sputtered slowly, hoping that if he took his time then she might understand.

"Tucker . . . your injuries are really bad, if I move you like that—"

". . . dead . . . anyway," he chuckled, or at least he tried to but it mostly just sounded like he was grunting. ". . . but . . . save . . . Danny . . ."

"Tucker . . ."

"NOW!" he snapped, or rather, hissed, for he could barely speak, and he felt Jazz's hands grab him and slowly do as he commanded. Even though he knew she was trying to be gentle, her fingertips felt like knives driving into his sides as she forced him up, and her gently leaning him against the wall felt more like he'd been slammed in the back by a semi when his spine touched the cold surface.

Ignoring it as best he could, he moved his fingers over his PDA, operating more on touch than on sight. He was as skilled at navigating his device as Jazz was at taking tests, and he knew that he'd done most of the work to break through Vlad's system beforehand. It would only take opening the right files, linking up to the billionaire's systems . . . had he plugged in the hard line before he'd gotten attacked? He thought he had, but he wasn't sure.

"Line?" he whispered to Jazz.

"Lie? Tucker, I've been lying to Danny this whole time already," she said, "and I'm obviously not going to tell him the truth until we're done with this. He wouldn't be able to take it if you—"

"No," he muttered, shaking his head, or at least he tried to . . . somehow, he didn't think it moved at all. "Line."

"OH!" Jazz lifted something and moved it into his fingers. "Yeah, Tucker, it's in. And, um . . . there's something on the screen. It's asking to initiate?"

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Tucker laughed. Of course it would just be a button. All that screaming, all of Jazz's making him sit up and suffer, all of Danny's frustration as he held off Vlad's minions, and all that needed to be done was for him to click 'yes.' Jazz could've done it, easily, but she'd been too nervous about messing with his tech or too worried about him to realize it.

"Yes," he mumbled.

"Yes?" she repeated, and Tucker gave a half-hearted groan. It was the best he could do, and Danny's triumphant "Ha!" over the headset told him that it had obviously worked and that Jazz had pushed that magic little button.

"About time! Jeez, Tucker, you're getting rusty!" chuckled Danny, oblivious, and tears ran down Tucker's face as he passed out, his mind idly wondering if the last thing he'd ever hear from his friend was a lame quip about how he'd lost his touch.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Someday I'll write a cheery one-shot again . . . Someday . . .**


	13. I Must Be Dreaming

**I Must Be Dreaming**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.**

**And this one was hastily written in a fit of boredom tonight, so it's probably much rougher than my usual fare, but I'm trying to make myself update at least once a week again, so . . . yup. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. ;)  
><strong>

Maddie blinked as she looked around, her eyes briefly unfocused as she tried to come to terms with her surroundings. One minute she'd be in that supposedly haunted house with Jack, fighting a ghostly knight that they could barely see in the darkness, and then the next she'd found herself back at the house, standing in their basement lab. The portal hummed softly in the background as the ectogun in her hands whined, and hearing a faint clatter behind her, Maddie whipped around and pointed the gun at the intruder.

"Whoa, Mom, watch where you're pointing that thing!" teased Danny, holding his hands up in mock surrender, yet there was something about the way he eyed the gun uneasily that suggested his smile was a little less genuine than it appeared. Not for the first time, there was a slight hint in his sparkling blue eyes that suggested that he was much, much more afraid of the ecto-gun than he should have been, and the strangeness of it gnawed at Maddie. After all, Danny knew that the guns couldn't hurt a human, so there was no reason why he ought to be afraid.

"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry," she said, lowering the weapon. "I just—I thought—I guess I must've fallen asleep in the lab or something. I really thought I was with your father in that haunted house, and that you were some ghost sneaking up on me."

"Me? A ghost?" Danny laughed, rolling his eyes. "Must've been some nightmare."

"I—I guess," she sighed unconvincingly. "Maybe we've been working too hard lately. Is your father around?"

"Uh, no. He's at that college thing with Jazz or whatever, remember?" said Danny, and he stared at her uneasily now, obviously worried. "You _don't _remember, do you?"

"I . . . " Maddie chuckled somewhat hysterically then, shaking her head. "No. I don't. I don't know what's wrong with me, Danny."

Walking over to her, he gently grabbed the ecto-gun from her hands and put it on a nearby lab table. "Maybe you should sit down, then."

Nodding, Maddie didn't fight as he helped her down onto the lab bench, and pulling off her goggles Danny put the back of his hand against her head. She jerked slightly, surprised by how cold his skin was. Had he always been so cool to the touch . . .?

"I don't think you have a fever," he mumbled.

"We have thermometers, Danny," Maddie chuckled, nodding at a drawer. "And you don't need to worry. I don't think I have a fever at all, either. I'm not sick. I'm just . . . just a little tired, I suppose."

"Hehe, I know the feeling," he said, sitting down beside her. "So, the short version, then. Dad and Jazz are at some college orientation thing. He wanted a chance to do some bonding with his "Jazzerincess"," he said, emphasizing the nickname with air quotes, "before she left Amity Park for that terrifying university life of corruption and parental alienation. Or something. Jazz's words, not mine."

"Obviously."

"Hey! I'm not as smart as her, but that doesn't mean I'm that stupid, either," Danny grumbled. "I've even been bringing my grades back up lately."

"That's true," his mom admitted, recalling how abysmally low his scores had fallen during his freshman year and sophomore year. She was just beginning to think that he wouldn't graduate when he'd slowly started making progress again and his barely passing grades moved up to marks that would make any parent proud. She couldn't understand why it had happened, either. Her son had never been as obsessed with school as Jazz, but he had still managed to do most of his homework in middle school and get the occasional 'A' in his classes. And then suddenly, after his first few week of high school, his grades took a complete nosedive, his teachers started complaining that he was absent all the time, not to mention that month where he kept destroying beakers in science class. "I'm starting to have faith again that you'll graduate."

"Me, too, actually," he admitted softly, looking a bit wistful.

"Too bad you seem like you're not going to get any taller, though," she teased, noticing for the first time in a while just how unnaturally short her son was. He was a junior now, yet he was barely an inch taller than he had been as a freshman. She wouldn't have thought much of it, except that his father was so tall and even she wasn't actually short, either.

"See, this is why we don't sit in the lab and bond more often," he grumbled sharply. "You always find ways to make me feel so good about myself, like poking at my height, but at least I'm taller than . . . " He paused, then, looking sheepishly at his mother. It was as if for a moment he'd forgotten she was there.

"Than who, sweetie?"

"Than nobody," he lied, shaking his head. "I didn't say anything. Seriously."

"Mmm-hmm," she smirked, but she let it drop. She knew that Danny wasn't ready to admit his feelings for his friend Sam, no matter how hard she pressed him. "But honestly, Danny, I just thought you stopped coming down here because of all the ghost equipment reacting so poorly to you."

"It doesn't all react to me—" he began, but he stopped as she picked up the Fenton Ghost Finder and pointed it at her son. With a flick of a switch, the device instantly reacted to Danny's presence.

"Ghost directly ahead. You would have to be an idiot not to notice the ghost in front of you," proclaimed the Fenton Finder monotonously, making Danny wince.

"I still don't understand why all of our equipment likes you so much," said Maddie as she turned it off. "Normally I would just assume it was excess contamination confusing our instruments, but our equipment never reacts that way around your father or Jazz or me, and we all spend just as much if not more time in the lab than you do."

"Yeah, uh, weird," he chuckled uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I've even tried taking it apart and rebuilding it a few times," she sighed, nodding at the Fenton Ghost Finder. "But it still keys into you, just the same. If I weren't your mother, then I'd honestly have to believe that you were a ghost, but there's no way you could hide something like that from me. There would be signs, things that would be impossible not to pick up on . . ." Her voice trailed off as she looked back at her son, and for the first time, she realized that there _were _signs. Her son's grades, his cold touch, his lack of obvious change or growth over the past few years in high school, not to mention every single one of their devices detecting an ecto-signature from Danny where there simply shouldn't be one.

And the nervous look in his eyes right now as he watched her following this particular thread, as if he knew what she was thinking and was desperately praying that she wouldn't, couldn't connect the dots.

"I'm not a ghost," he blurted out suddenly, and then winced, as if realizing how painfully guilty his uncalled for defense made him sound.

"I—of course not, sweetie . . . it's ridiculous . . ." she said slowly, but her mind was churning over the evidence, pointing more and more towards her son being a ghost. It wasn't anything big, but there were little signs, little pieces everywhere. The way he got nervous every time Jack announced he had a new piece of ghost hunting gear. The bad reaction he had to the Specter Deflector—although he had managed to wear it successfully without getting shocked for a while during that whole Dalv incident. "It _is _ridiculous, right?" she whispered, hoping he'd say yes, that he'd confirm that her worst fears couldn't possibly be true.

And as much as she hoped he would say yes, he didn't. Instead, he let out a long, trembling breath. "Mom . . . there's something I need to tell you. Do you remember the lab accident during my freshman year with the ghost portal?"

"Of course," she replied. That day had been one of the most frightening moments of her life, when Jazz had called her crying over the phone, saying that Danny was lying unconscious downstairs while his friends stood by in a state of shock. "You were standing outside the portal and it activated. Of course, I never understood how that happened. We tried looking over everything in the wiring, the cables, and there's no way it should have just spontaneously started up that way . . ."

"Well, I guess you missed something, because I lied. I wasn't outside of the portal when it turned on, I was on the inside," he explained, and Maddie felt her blood run cold at his words.

"You were on the inside?" she repeated, and he nodded. "But . . . but that much energy . . . there's no way you could survive something like that. That kind of shock . . . it would have killed you, and you're not . . . you can't be . . ."

"I'm dead, mom," he confirmed, his words so blunt yet so piercing at the same time that Maddie shivered, and suddenly there was a slight shimmer as her son was replaced. No longer was her blue-eyed, black haired baby boy staring at her.

Instead, it was the glowing green eyes and silver white hair of Phantom, decked out in his jumpsuit, that appeared where Danny once stood. "I'm a ghost. I'm Danny Phantom."

"You can't—but—I don't—I've seen you _breathe!_" she whispered. "I've felt your heartbeat, and I've watched you eat, and—"

"—it's just something I can do," he said, shrugging. "I figured out a way to look like I was still human. Shape-shifting, you know? And when I do that, I just . . . I don't know. I guess I can simulate it, somehow. You know I'm not that smart, mom. I've never been able to figure it all out."

"But—you can't—Danny Phantom—we've hunted you!" she cried. "We've almost _killed _you!"

"Yeah . . . and you know, sometimes it's hard to hold back when you do stuff like that. Sometimes, when you shoot at me, I feel like it would just be so much easier to forget that you ever meant something to me," he continued, and a glowing green sphere appeared in his left hand, "and it makes me want to just scream at you, to destroy you since I knew there was no way you could possibly accept something like me or love me."

"After all, you've spent your entire life talking about how much you hate ghosts," he said. "Why would the ghost of your son be any different?"

"Please stop this, Danny. This isn't funny anymore," she whispered, shaking her head and crying softly. "You're not—I can't—you can't be dead. You can't be _him._"

"And you can't accept me this way, can you?" he hissed, and the monstrous look in his eyes, the cold, calculating hunger as he moved slowly in to destroy her completely, made Maddie fall to her knees. "_Can you?" _he shrieked, and the cry became a horrific wail that echoed through the lab and sent Maddie spiraling into the ghost portal. Screaming as she smashed against the wall, Maddie desperately clawed for an ecto-gun, for anything that would let her destroy this terrible, distorted echo of what had once been her precious baby boy.

"Sorry, mom," he sneered as he slow floated over towards her, dangling the ecto-gun she'd originally been holding when he walked into the lab. "Did you really just think I'd let you shoot me now?"

"Just go. Please just go away."

"I will _never _go away," he told her softly. "I'm your worst fear, mom. I'm your son. I'm a ghost."

"And I'm Danny Phantom."

"Go away!" she sobbed, no longer able to look at him, and all she could hear was a dark chuckle as her world suddenly went dark.

* * *

><p>Waking up was painful, and when she finally did manage to open her eyes, Maddie saw her family looking at her worriedly. Jack was gently brushing her hair back with his hand, while Jazz and Danny sat at the foot of the couch watching her nervously.<p>

"Oh, thank goodness, Mads, you're alright!" exclaimed Jack, hugging her tightly, and Maddie winced since her husband's embrace was just a little too enthusiastic for her right now.

"What . . . what happened?" she mumbled, unable to suppress a shiver as she looked at her son, but he was back to normal, no trace of Phantom within him. His hair was black, his eyes were blue, and that horrifying, cold aura that sent shivers up her spine before was gone. No cruel smile danced on his lips as he looked at her, and there was no malice in his eyes, only concern.

"You were hit by this sword that sent you into a dimension where you were forced to face your worst fear," explained Jazz slowly. "And, um, after Danny Phantom and dad beat the ghost, you came back, but you were kind of a mess and kept freaking out, so, um . . ."

"I kind of drugged you, Mads," explained Jack sheepishly. "I didn't want you to hurt yourself, and I thought you'd be better if you woke up with us here beside you, you know?"

"Thanks, honey," she said softly as she slowly forced herself to sit up, but her head was spinning and her mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Understanding appeared in Jazz's eyes as she jumped to her feet and grabbed a glass of water for her mom, and Maddie thanked her quietly as she took a long sip. It didn't do much to ease the pain or the confusion, but it helped.

"So . . . um . . . what was your worst fear, Mom?" asked Danny curiously, and seeing him there still sent a shiver down her spine. She had to tell herself that her dream was absurd, that if they were right then all she saw the embodiment of her fear and not her actual son, and she smiled at him despite the chill that ran through her when she met his gaze.

"Oh, sweetie, well, that's not hard to guess," she said. "My worst fear has always been something happening to you or Jazz or Jack and then having you come back as a ghost . Although I don't know why I imagined that you'd . . ."

"That I'd what?" he asked, and his voice sounded tight, almost strained, and for a moment she flashed back to that moment in that dimension where the fake Danny Fenton had looked nervous when she began talking about their devices.

"Well, that your ghost would be Phantom," she replied, chuckling, although it was hard to laugh at it no matter how absurd the idea that her son might be a ghost seemed now. "See, when I was living through my fear it was like you'd been Phantom all along, but you had some strange power that let you disguise yourself as a human and so your father and I never even realized you were dead after all. Of course, it explained a lot about the past couple of years, like your grades and the injuries, but the whole notion now just seems so ridiculous and . . . sweetie? Danny, what's wrong?"

She paused, then, as she noticed the look in his eyes, one that she'd never believed she would see. It was a mixture of fear, awe, guilt, and regret, and of a sorrow so profound that she just couldn't understand it. Glancing over at Jack, she saw that he was staring at their son as well, just as confused as she was, while Jazz 's hand had crept over her mouth in shock, her eyes wide and her expression one of absolute horror.

"Your . . . your greatest fear—your _worst _fear—" he whispered, the words coming out in choked gasps, "is that I'm Danny Phantom?"

"Um . . . well, yes, Danny, but you can understand, can't you?" she said slowly, not sure why he was so upset. All their life they'd taught their kids how evil ghosts were, how horrible and how divorced from the people they'd been when they were once alive. Ghosts were nothing more than an echo of the humans they'd once been, a personification of a particular emotion driven solely by a single, powerful obsession. "How horrible it would be if you were actually a ghost, especially one that we've hunted for so long and might've destroyed or dissected if we ever had the chance?"

"She's right, son," said Jack, not sure why his son looked so upset, but then again, Maddie seemed just as confused as he was. "Why, if you were that Phantom punk, then it'd mean that you'd died and become another putrid piece of ectoplasmic scum that we'd be forced to destroy or—"

"STOP!" shrieked Jazz, putting her hands over her ears, and her parents flinched, shocked by her outburst. "Can't you—you don't—argh, you two are so STUPID sometimes!" she roared, and standing up she grabbed Danny's arm.

"Come on, Danny," she said forcefully, and Danny stumbled slightly as she pulled him out of the chair and away from Maddie's bedside.

"Jazz, Danny, I don't—what's wrong with you?"

"Isn't it obvious?" snapped Jazz, and there were tears building as she put her arms around her brother. "All these years, all these times he questioned it, I told him that no matter what, you'd accept him for who and what he was. I told him that he had nothing to worry about, that he should tell you his secret so that he'd stop worrying, and instead you just sat here and told him that you can't think of anything more horrifying than having Phantom for a son!"

"But, uh, Jazz, you're still no making any sense, princess," said Jack, but even as the words came out of his mouth, Maddie understood.

Her mind, her subconscious, had put together all of the clues for her. The portal accident, the physical changes like his body temperature and his unusually slow growth, the injuries, the grades, the lies as he'd broken curfews and ducked out of class, the similarity between their names as well as their appearances and mannerisms . . . her worst fear hadn't been that her son was Phantom simply because it was horrible or because the thought of her son being a ghost terrified her.

No, her worst fear had been that her son was Phantom because it was true and because she quite simply couldn't bring herself to face that awful truth. She'd let herself believe the lies, believe it was just bullies and that he was just a late bloomer, believe that what she saw in Phantom's gestures and physical similarities was just an uncomfortable coincidence rather than face the uncomfortable reality that had been forcing itself down her throat ever since the Fenton Finder first proclaimed that she'd have to be an idiot not to see what was right in front of her.

The truth was that her son, her sweet baby boy, was dead.

That Danny was a ghost.

And that he was Danny Phantom.

**A/N: So, to clear up a few questions that you might have. First, Maddie was attacked by the Fright Knight and hit with the Soul Shredder. I know that the fears they experienced didn't quite work this way in the episode, but it just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, and somehow she seems like the kind of person who'd have a more developed fear than being trapped on an island with no technology.**

**Oh, Tucker . . .**

**Second, the stuff in the realm of fear that Danny does/says? Don't take it as being or having to be IC for Danny. The whole point is that this is a distorted version of her worst fear and the truth about her son being Danny Phantom. Naturally, his being a ghost is NOT going to be good in a fear-stricken Maddie's eyes, and the whole point was that her brain was trying to explain something that she didn't fully understand, that she only intuitively knew, and in the realm of fears it did that in the most nightmarish way possible because it was, well, her fears.  
><strong>

**Crud, I hope that makes sense.**

**Anyway, review, please, and let me know what you thought.**


	14. Bubble Wrap

**Bubble Wrap**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom. Surprise, surprise.  
><strong>

A strange crash echoed from outside as Danny sat at the table desperately trying to get his homework done before he had to go to school. He'd been up all night fighting ghosts, as usual, and now he was stuck trying to finish his final English essay for Mr. Lancer in ten minutes. Five hundred words, topic of his choice. It should have been easy.

"It's not a ghost," Danny mumbled when he heard the crashing noise a second time. It sounded like someone was knocking over the garbage cans. "My ghost sense would have gone off if it was. It's probably just Dad, and he's probably just digging through the neighbor's trash for parts for some new invention again—"

A sudden chill and a single fogged breath instantly made Danny stop, and sighing heavily, he put down his pencil and forced himself to his feet even as his shoulders sagged.

"Or not. You'd think my parents could take care of it for once," he grumbled as he glanced around the kitchen, and shifting into his alter ego, he quickly flew through the kitchen wall and in the direction of the sounds he'd heard a minute ago as he prepared an ecto blast. Normally he'd wait to assess the threat before preparing a blast since not all ghosts were malevolent, but if he could just get this taken care of quickly, then maybe, just maybe he'd be able to finish that essay and squeak by without failing, and so today whatever poor ghost was outside was going to suffer from a blast first, questions later policy.

Yet the instant Danny spotted the ghost, he realized he probably should have kept doing his homework after all since this particular being wasn't a threat at all.

"Beware, oh metal rectangular device, for I shall insert my box shaped letter of doom into your—"

"Hey!" snapped Danny irritably, and instantly the Box Ghost paused and looked over at him. Sure enough, the trash cans were the banging that he'd heard earlier—the Box Ghost had knocked them over and into the street, which Danny couldn't understand since the stupid ghost could've just gone intangible and moved through them instead of making a mess, but maybe the fact that they were giant cylinders bothered him or something.

And naturally if the ghosts weren't making messes all the time, then Danny wouldn't have been forced to don his metaphorical cape in the first place.

"Can't you just, I don't know, go terrorize some other part of town this morning? Maybe the mayor's instead?" he grumbled, scowling as he floated over there with his arms crossed. "I really don't have the time to take out my aggression on you, no matter how much I really want to right now."

"Beware, Danny Phantom, for I am not here to terrorize you with my boxes and bubble wrap of doom!"

"Funny, but it kind of looks like that's _exactly _what you're doing," Danny grumbled, nodding at the trash barrels, but the box ghost merely ignored him.

"No, young Phantom. Today, I am here to place my box-shaped invitation to my wedding in your rectangular delivery box of doo—"

"—wait, your _what?_" gaped Danny, staring at him stupidly, and for the first time he noticed the white invitation in the ghosts hands, or at least, the object that the ghost claimed was an invitation. Danny had never seen one shaped like a box before, after all, yet somehow it totally fit the bizarre, box obsessed ghost.

"My wedding, Phantom!" he declared proudly, holding out the invitation. "I am betrothed to the Lunch Lady, and she insisted that we invite you to our wedding!"

For a long moment Danny simply floated there, staring at the Box Ghost in shock. Even though he knew that the Lunch Lady and the Box Ghost were the parents of Box Lunch, the cutesy little ghost girl from the future who packed boxes full of delicious food related destruction, he hadn't even considered that it was still going to happen in his timeline now that he'd defeated his evil self, or that they would have planned on getting married first. And inviting him, Danny Phantom, their enemy, to said wedding . . . that was just bizarre.

For once, Danny didn't have a witty comeback.

"But . . . um . . . I'm your enemy, remember?" he said at last, barely able to squeak the words out through his shock addled brain.

"Beware, Danny Phantom, for if that means that you are not planning on coming to our box themed glorious wedding then I shall be forced to rain cube faced doom upon you until—"

"—Okay, okay, I get it!" snapped Danny, grabbing the invitation from the ghost's outstretched hand. "I mean, I _don't _get it, but whatever! I'll be there! Now can you please just leave me alone? I have a paper to finish."

"Very well, Danny Phantom!" he exclaimed, and as he rapidly disappeared he let out one last cry, "And BEWARE!"

Shaking his head as he transformed back into regular old Danny Fenton, he walked back up the stairs to his house and sat down. Sure enough, when he opened the box, there was an invitation inside to the wedding of the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady (the date and time were scrawled in icing across the top of a tiny cake beneath a layer of the Box Ghosts's beloved bubble wrap, of all things, but since it was glowing he didn't dare try and eat it), to be held two weeks after he got out of school at Skulker's Lair.

"How the heck did they get Skulker to agree to that?" murmured Danny, grinning as he pictured the two hopeless spooks trying to convince the hunter to let them use his island for their wedding. The only thing stranger than picturing Skulker agreeing to it was that somebody actually _wanted _to use Skulker's lair for a wedding site.

"I wonder what I should get them for a wedding present . . . maybe a box lunch?" he chuckled, shaking his head, and then he noticed that the invitation said he could bring one guest. Grabbing his phone and his horrible, mostly forgotten and unfinished paper, he quickly dialed Sam's number as he rushed out the door, transformed, and headed to school.

There was no way she was going to want to miss this.

**A/N: Yup. My attempt at avoiding another depressing one-shot was to write this silly thing before heading off to work today. Still, I hope that you guys enjoyed it, and as always, please review. :) **


	15. Imaginary

**Imaginary**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.  
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"What'd you get for number one?"

"Twenty-three. How about you?"

"Crud. I got seventeen . . . we were supposed to subtract that number, not add it, idiot."

"No, you were supposed to add it."

"Subtract!"

"No, add. See the sign at the front? That means that we need to—"

"—Danny?" A soft voice called out to him and instantly he froze. He didn't realize that his sister was home right now, otherwise he would've been much, much more careful. Several dozen therapy sessions and six failed medication regiments had quickly taught him that lesson, since Jazz was more than willing to rat him out to his parents every time she caught them talking. "Is . . . Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine, Jazz," Danny lied as he pushed his bangs out of his face, and even though she knew that was Danny's equivalent of politely telling her to get lost, his sister didn't hesitate to invite herself in anyway. Opening the door, the red head stood there and watched him warily, her sapphire eyes studying him with a precision that only his current therapist, Dr. Spectra, could match. It was unnerving, disturbing, and it made Danny want to run away screaming. But at least Phantom didn't insist that Jazz was a ghost when she called him crazy. Danny still couldn't get him to stop accusing Spectra of being a ghost during his sessions, and when he'd told the doctor this, it had just reinforced her suspicions about Danny being a paranoid schizophrenic. Danny didn't exactly have a witty comeback for that one, since it wasn't like there was any way he could prove that Spectra was a ghost and not just someone that he and Phantom both hated since she thought they were crazy. "I just suck at math."

Still, even though he never accused Jazz of being a ghost, Phantom wasn't any fonder of his nosy sister than Danny usually was. "Oh, great, it's Jazz," grumbled the boy floating cross-legged in the air beside him. "What does she want?"

"Probably to psychoanalyze me and lock me up in a bubble," Danny mumbled, and then wanted to smack himself in the head. He hadn't meant to talk to him in front of people anymore, but it was just so hard not to respond when someone spoke to him, especially when that someone occasionally had something useful to say. "God damn it, shut up for a minute, okay? She already thinks I'm crazy enough."

"Danny . . ." said Jazz slowly, obviously not sure how to broach the subject as she watched her brother responding to, well, nothing. "The new medicine isn't working, is it?"

"No." Of course it wasn't working. Danny wasn't taking it anymore, not after that first time where it had messed with his head so badly that he'd started hallucinating and walking in his sleep. It wasn't a good combination, and he hadn't been willing to risk it happening again when he knew he wasn't crazy.

Too bad he couldn't make his sister understand that. It wasn't like she could see the ghost floating beside him. For that matter, the only one who could was Danny. No one believed Danny when he told them about the accident with the portal and how he'd been inside at the time, about how the shock had sort of killed him for a minute, and how that was just long enough to leave behind a ghost . . . and how ever since then, he could now see the ghosts all over Amity Park and was haunted by his own spirit. It was the kind of thing that sounded crazy, even to him, and he lived through it.

Every day.

"Did you tell Dr. Spectra?" she asked, her tone implying that she would tell his therapist if he didn't.

"I haven't seen her since I started this new stuff," he grumbled. "I'll let her know, though, so why don't you leave me alone so I can fail at my math homework in peace?"

"I could help you with it, you know," offered Jazz as she walked over to the desk, and frowning at his work she shook her head. "Danny, you needed to subtract the three, not add it. You have to do the opposite of the sign in front of it to cancel it out."

"HA!" laughed Phantom triumphantly, his green eyes shining brilliantly.

"Shut up," growled Danny, shooting his ghostly self a glare.

"I'm just trying to help," Jazz sighed, and glancing up at his sister he saw the hurt look in her eyes.

"I didn't mean—Jazz . . . I wasn't talking about you, okay?" he sighed. "He got it right, I got it wrong, and he was kinda lording it over me for a second."

"I wasn't lording it over you," said Phantom. "I was just gloating. Just a little."

"It's the same thing!" hissed Danny as he looked over at the ghost, and the disturbed look on his sister's face was infinitely worse than anything he could've imagined. "Look, Jazz, was there something you wanted? 'cause I get enough hell for talking to myself at school, and I don't need it from you, too."

"Actually . . . well, Mom and I didn't want to tell you because we were worried about how it might damage you psychologically . . ."

"What is it?"

"Dad invented this new thing," she explained, "called the Ghost Gabber. It takes whatever frequency ghosts are speaking on and brings it into something that normal people can hear. Dad thinks that if you really are being haunted by your ghost or whatever, then the ghost gabber should be able to pick up on what he's saying, but mom thinks that it's about as reliable as an EVP."

"Uh . . . okay," said Danny slowly, ignoring his sister's doubts about the invention. She didn't even believe in ghosts, so naturally she believed that their dad's invention couldn't work. Their father was the only one who thought that there might be a chance that what Danny was saying was true since the signs that he was being haunted-things like flickering lights, static, unusually high EMF readings close to him and cold spots-tended to follow him everywhere. Danny knew that his father desperately wanted to prove that his son wasn't crazy.

For that matter, so did Danny. He'd had so many people tell him that he was insane that even he was starting to have his doubts. "So what you're saying is that Dad might've made something that can prove Phantom exists?"

"That's what he says," Jazz sighed, shaking her head, "but—"

Grabbing her hand, Danny jumped to his feet and ran for the door. "Well, then, come on! What are you waiting for?" he laughed excitedly, and he didn't have to tell Phantom to follow. The ghost was right behind the pair as they charged down the stairs, flying intangibly through the wall and hovering excitedly nearby as Jack sat at the table with a strange looking device in his hand.

"Is that it?" asked Danny instantly, and his mother gave Jazz a kind of weary, hopeless look while at the same time seeming somewhat hopeful. She obviously didn't approve of this, of feeding into Danny's delusions or whatever, but they weren't delusions. They were _real_. Phantom wasn't just imaginary.

"Yup! This baby is the Fenton Ghost Gabber! If you're being haunted by that ghost like you say, then it should make it possible for the rest of us to hear it, too!" exclaimed Jack as he flipped it on. "So, uh . . . tell the ghost to say something, Danny!"

"Oh, please. I'm not a dog, I'm a ghost. Don't start telling me to bark on command, dad," said Phantom, and Danny gazed at the device nervously. For a second he thought nothing would happen, but then a monotonous female voice emerged through the speakers.

"_Oh, please. I'm not a dog, I'm a ghost. Don't start telling me to bark on command, dad. Fear me."_

"That's . . . that's . . . " Danny started, his eyes wide and shocked. He couldn't believe it. It was him. It was Phantom . . . well, all of it except the fear me part.

His parents and sister wore looks of equal shock as the ghost's voice echoed via proxy.

"It works," whispered Phantom.

"_It works. Fear me."_

"Except for that fear me part. I'm not saying fear me."

_Except for that fear me part. I'm not saying fear me. Fear me."_

"He's not," confirmed Danny. "Why's it doing that?"

"Does it matter?!" exclaimed his mother, throwing her arms around him. "Danny, don't you get it? This means that you're not—you're not crazy! Phantom is _real!_"

"Well, duh," said Danny and Phantom as one.

"_Well, duh," _echoed the device. _"Fear me."_

**A/N: So I haven't updated in about three months. I've just been busy and lacking in motivation. Such is life. **

**Anyway, this weird little one-shot is one that I wrote way back for this collection and didn't post because I was toying with the idea of making a full story out of it. I still might do that, since I kind of like the basic idea even if I'm not totally thrilled with how it came out here (definitely needed more editing, but again, feeling sort of lazy and unmotivated), but I should probably finish at least one of my other stories up first. In any case, I hope you enjoyed it and hopefully it won't be quite so long before the next update. **

**'til next time!  
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